STATESMEN  OF  THE 
OLD  SOUTH 


o. 


THE  M  ACHILLAS  COMPANY 

nv  YORK   •    BOSTOH   •    CHICAGO 
SAM   ntANCtSCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO  ,  LnarwD 

LOKDOM   •    POM  BAY   •    CALCtTTTA 
MELBOCKNK 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA.  LTD. 
TOKO  WTO 


STATESMEN    OF 
THE  OLD  SOUTH 

OR 

FROM  RADICALISM  TO 

CONSERVATIVE 

REVOLT 

BY 

WILLIAM  E.  DODD,  Ph.  D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  AMERICAN  HISTORY  IN 
THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 

Author  of  The  Life  of  Nathaniel  Macon,  Life  of  Jefferton  Davit,  Xte. 


fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1911 

All  right*  reserved 


COPYEIGHT,    igil 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published   September,   1911 


Printed  «t 

The  NORWOOD  PRESS 
Berwick  &  Smith  Company,  Norwood,  Massachusetts 


Co  Q0p  jFatbct 


223968 


PREFACE 

THE  substance  of  the  following  papers  has 
been  presented  in  the  form  of  popular  lec 
tures  at  the  University  of  California,  the 
University  of  Indiana,  the  University  of  Chicago, 
Richmond  and  Randolph  Macon  Colleges  and  it 
cannot  be  expected  that  the  treatment  of  these 
interesting  Southern  leaders  of  the  olden  time  will 
be  found  entirely  free  from  the  defects  of  the 
lecture  method.  Still  it  is  hoped  that  the  point 
of  view  and  the  interpretation  of  certain  facts  and 
conditions  of  the  Southern  and  national  evolution 
may  justify  the  publication  of  these  studies. 

The  author  is  under  obligations  to  Mr.  C.  D. 
Johns,  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  for  reading 
the  entire  proof  and  for  making  the  index. 

WM.  E.  DODD 

University  of  Chicago 
July  20,  1911 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE v11 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

JOHN  C.  CALHOUN 91 

JEFFERSON  DAVIS 

INDEX 


FROM  RADICALISM  TO 

CONSERVATIVE 

REVOLT 


STATESMEN  OF  THE 
OLD  SOUTH 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

I 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON  is  a  name  to  con 
jure  with  in  the  United  States.  Extreme 
individualists  who  desire  to  exploit  the 
resources  of  the  nation  and  re-establish  feudalism 
in  the  world,  make  pious  pilgrimages  to  Monti- 
cello;  radical  democrats  who  feel  that  the  prin 
ciples  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  are 
about  to  perish  from  the  earth,  regard  the  great 
Virginia  leader  as  their  patron  saint;  and  social 
ists  appeal  to  the  writings  of  Jefferson  for  grave 
opinions  to  justify  the  "regime  of  the  future." 
Andrew  Jackson  overturned  the  old  Jefferson 
party  in  the  name  of  its  founder  and  Abraham 
Lincoln  based  his  arguments  against  slavery  upon 
well-known  passages  from  the  famous  Notes  on 


N  JQF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Virginia,  while  Jefferson  Davis  believed  from 
the  bottom  of  his  heart  that  secession  and  civil 
war,  even  on  behalf  of  slavery,  was  only  an  appli 
cation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Virginia  and  Ken 
tucky  resolutions!  And  Jefferson  himself  gave 
reason  for  many  of  these  divergent  and  irrecon 
cilable  views;  in  his  published  writings  there  is 
abundant  justification  for  the  contentions  of  these 
present-day  followers,  though  the  man,  were  he 
still  with  us,  would  speedily  repudiate  any  and 
all  who  deny  the  full  and  complete  application  of 
the  doctrine  of  democracy,  that  is  the  democracy 
of  Lincoln  as  against  slavery,  of  Bryan  as  against 
Wall  street,  of  the  West  as  against  the  East. 
Jefferson  would  have  been  a  populist  in  1892  or 
an  insurgent  in  1910. 

"Jefferson,  the  populist."  With  this  rather 
startling  idea  in  mind,  let  us  look  into  the  life 
of  the  "Man  of  the  Mountain,"  as  John  Randolph 
was  accustomed  to  say. 

Peter  Jefferson,  the  father  of  Thomas,  was  a 
westerner,  a  land  surveyor  and  Indian  fighter,  a 
character  not  unlike  that  of  Daniel  Boone,  vigor 
ous,  rough,  close-fisted.  The  colony  of  Virginia 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  3 

employed  him  to  survey  her  southern  boundary 
line  and  like  most  other  surveyors  of  land  he 
patented  a  good  deal  for  himself  and  settled  upon 
it  during  the  fourth  decade  of  the  eighteenth 
century  to  "grow  up  with  the  back-country." 
He  came  into  such  good  standing  with  Isham 
Randolph  of  Dungeness  that  he  was  given  one 
of  the  daughters,  of  whom  there  were  usually 
many  among  the  great  clans  of  Virginia,  to  wife. 
Thomas  was  therefore  well  born,  though  no  aris 
tocrat.  The  young  boy  was  put  to  school  with  a 
Scotch  pedagogue  in  Louisa  county — the  home  at 
that  time  of  radical  democracy  and  hard-headed 
Presbyterian  dissent.  But  the  schooling  was 
good  and  the  environment  better  in  view  of  the 
coming  career  of  the  boy.  In  Louisa  county 
men  wore  buckskin  breeches,  Indian  moccasins 
and  hunting  shirts  without  coats  to  cover  them, 
crowned  with  coonskin  caps.  There  was  still 
much  hunting  of  deer  and  turkeys  among  the 
hills  and  mountains  of  Louisa — the  fine  country 
made  famous  a  hundred  years  later  by  the 
marches  of  Lee  and  Jackson  and  the  two  great 
battles  at  Manassas — and  a  slender  stooping 


4      STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

youth  from  neighboring  Hanover  had  already 
made  a  name  for  himself  in  that  region  by  his 
"long  hunts"  and  popular  ways.  The  Hanover 
hunter  was  none  other  than  Patrick  Henry 
and  he  wore  buckskin  breeches  and  a  coonskin 
cap  like  his  new  found  neighbors.  Louisa,  next 
— to  Augusta,  was  the  greatest  county  in  Virginia, 
and  it  was  filled  with  the  cabins  of  a  teeming 
population  of  farmers  and  small  proprietors  who 
had  escaped  the  hard  conditions  of  the  ridges  and 
sandy  plains  of  the  old  counties  between  the  James 
and  York  and  the  York  and  Rappahannock 
rivers.  Orange,  Rappahannock  and  Augusta 
counties  made  up  the  West,  the  first  "land  of 
opportunity"  for  the  restless  people  of  the  "Tide 
water."  And  this  west  extended  from  a  little 
above  the  present  Richmond  to  the  sites  of  Cincin 
nati  and  Pittsburg — a  princely  domain  which  in 
young  Jefferson's  day  was  filled  with  game  and 
Indians  and  the  fathers  of  the  men  who  planned 
the  Revolution  and  largely  fought  its  battles. 
Not  only  the  Jeffersons,  but  the  Madisons,  Mon 
roes,  Marshalls  and  Lewises  dwelt  in  this  region, 
and  here  Washington  surveyed  Fairfax  lands  and 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  5 

later  found  recruits  for  his  army  when  all  other 
sections  failed  him. 

With  a  thorough  training  in  the  rudiments  of 
Latin  and  Greek  and  an  even  more  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  strong  men  of  the  backwoods, 
young  Jefferson  was  next  sent,  at  the  age  of  seven 
teen,  to  the  College  of  William  and  Mary,  then  the 
best  seat  of  learning  in  America.  He  was  very 
tall,  very  awkward,  timid  by  nature,  uncomfort 
able  in  the  presence  of  greatness  and  exceedingly 
homely.  He  had  the  distinction  of  being  the 
homeliest  youth  in  school — his  eyes  were  gray-blue 
and  restless,  his  cheek  bones  were  high  and  his 
thin  freckled  skin  covered  no  superfluous  flesh, 
while  his  hands  and  feet  were  large  and  bony. 

Naturally  gifted  and  always  ready  to  learn,  he 
studied  his  environment,  "sized  up"  his  com 
panions  and  professors  and  within  a  short  time 
was  gaining  more  from  the  new  environment,  it  is 
safe  to  say,  than  any  other  youth  in  school.  Aris 
tocratic  Virginia  centered  in  and  around  Williams- 
burg.  In  the  town  were  the  winter  houses  of  the 
great  planters  who  came  in  to  attend  the  sessions 
of  His  Majesty's  royal  council  when  the  burgesses 


6      STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

assembled  which,  like  the  House  of  Commons  in 
England,  generally  met  the  last  week  of  Novem 
ber.  The  great  wigs  of  Virginia  drove  into 
Williamsburg  in  their  stately  but  creaking  family 
carriages  preceded  by  outriders,  front  and  rear, 
to  scare  off  the  pigs  and  cattle  that  roamed  at 
will  about  the  village  common  or  to  warn  presump 
tuous  people  against  encroaching  too  close  upon 
eighteenth  century  dignity.  The  great  lords  of 
Virginia  when  young  Jefferson  was  a  student  at 
William  and  Mary  were  the  Braxtons,  Lees, 
Randolphs  and  Carters,  all  devoted  to  the  good 
English  ways  of  Walpole's  day,  fox-hunters,  deep 
drinkers,  ceremonious  and  formal  gentlemen  who 
loved  office  and  office-holding  like  the  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  their  exemplar.  To  be  a  member  of 
the  council  gave  a  Virginian  the  relative  rank 
and  standing  of  a  "noble  lord"  in  England  and 
the  great  families  strove,  intrigued  and  bribed 
to  secure  the  coveted  position.  An  important 
cause  of  Richard  Henry  Lee's  entering  upon  the 
revolutionary  career  was  his  failure  to  receive 
this  honor,  though  one  of  his  brothers  was  in  the 
council.  William  Beverly  of  Essex  offered  £200 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  7 

for  the  office  of  Secretary  to  the  council  for  which 
John  Carter  had  paid  1500  guineas  in  hard  cash. 
Plantation  masters  strove  for  new  plantations  and 
bought  negroes  and  patented  new  lands  and 
lavishly  entertained  the  governors  both  in  their 
Williamsburg  houses  and  on  their  country  estates 
in  order  that  they  and  their  descendants  might  be 
rated  as  "first  families."  The  greatest  honor 
open  to  a  Virginian  was  membership  in  the  coun 
cil;  Washington  himself  recognized  this  and 
strove  manfully  to  attain  it.  While  too  much 
stress  must  not  be  put  upon  social  life  and  mere 
honors,  it  is  true  that  the  love  of  these  distinctions 
and  the  desire  to  lead  in  Colonial  Virginia  were 
mainsprings  of  the  law  of  entails  and  negro 
slavery — privilege  then,  as  now,  was  the  high 
road  to  social  eminence. 

The  son  of  Peter  Jefferson  from  the  backwoods 
was  also  the  son  of  a  Randolph  and  despite  the 
boy's  uncouth  looks  and  awkward  ways  he  was 
welcomed  to  the  homes  of  the  great,  where  no 
doubt  his  real  abilities  found  expression.  He 
"played  the  fiddle,"  danced  and  could  turn  a  deft 
hand  at  cards;  he  "fell  in  love"  with'  Judy  Bur- 


8      STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

well  or  "Sukey"  Potter  which  was  no  drawback 
to  a  young  man  of  parts,  but  he  had  no  notion  of 
marrying — young  Jefferson  was  too  well-balanced, 
too  discreet  to  make  a  premature  alliance,  even 
with  the  daughter  of  so  great  a  house  as  that  of 
the  Burwells  of  the  Pamunky  valley  in  Hanover. 
He  was  at  home  at  the  gay  and  rollicksome  house 
of  Governor  Botetourt  whom  the  burgesses  loved 
well  enough  to  honor  with  the  name  of  one  of 
the  great  back-country  counties  whose  limits  em 
braced  all  Kentucky.  But  young  Jefferson  en 
joyed  most  perhaps  the  free  fun  of  a  holiday  visit 
to  Hanover  where  he  saw  the  true  burgess  stock 
— the  Lyons,  Symes,  Winstons  and  even  Patrick 
Henry,  then  a  sort  of  renegade  son  of  a  poor 
country  gentleman. 

The  orphan  boy  from  Albemarle  was  more, 
however,  than  a  mere  pleasure  seeker — he  stood  at 
"the  top  of  his  classes"  and  enjoyed  in  conse 
quence  the  companionship  of  some  of  his  teachers, 
especially  that  of  Professor  Small  the  mathema 
tician  and  naturalist  whom  Jefferson  pronounced 
then  and  afterward  the  foremost  scientist  of 
America.  From  1760  to  1767  the  young  man 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  9 

remained  a  student  at  William  and  Mary  and  in 
the  latter  year,  having  gained  both  the  academic 
honors  of  graduation  and  his  license  to  practise 
law,  he  returned  to  Albemarle  to  take  up  the  seri 
ous  business  of  life — serious  indeed  as  it  proved 
to  be.  He  was  like  many  other  young  Virginians 
of  the  time — John  Taylor  and  James  Madison, 
his  juniors  to  be  sure, — a  real  scholar.  Latin, 
Greek  and  French  he  knew  well  enough  to  retain 
and  enjoy  all  his  life;  in  law,  history  and  juris 
prudence  he  was  quite  as  well  versed  as  the  best 
men  of  the  country ;  and  in  manners  he  had  drunk 
from  the  Chesterfield  fountain  from  which  Bot- 
etourt  and  his  set  so  frequently  drew,  and  which 
was  to  serve  the  future  party  leader  and  president 
to  such  good  purpose.  But  while  he  saw  all  sides 
of  life  as  lived  at  Williamsburg  and  learned  from 
all,  he  was  not  a  part  of  that  gay,  social  and  friv 
olous  group  which  viewed  "all  the  world  as  a 
stage  and  all  men  as  mere  actors  upon  it" ;  he  was 
at  heart  a  western  man  with  eastern  polish,  with 
a  touch,  too,  of  the  sentimentalism  which,  some 
how,  reached  him  from  the  then  great  capital  of 
thought  and  philosophy — Paris,  but  without  the 


io  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

least  stain  of  the  immorality  which,  in  the  forms 
of  license  and  drunkenness,  was  so  common  in 
the  "best  society"  of  the  Old  Dominion.  It  was 
indeed  a  very  good  education  which  Jefferson 
received  at  the  little  provincial  college  and  at  the 
cost  of  less  than  two  pounds,  Virginia  currency, 
a  month! 

When  Jefferson  "hung  out  his  shingle"  in 
Albemarle  he  was  a  little  more  than  twenty-four 
years  old.  His  practice  became  immediately  lucra 
tive,  averaging  £3000  a  year  until  the  great  work 
of  the  Revolution  called  him  to  other  tasks.  His 
friend,  Henry,  was  at  that  time  winning  a  similar 
income  in  Hanover.  It  is  rather  a  suggestive 
commentary  on  the  character  of  Virginia  life 
just  before  the  Revolution  to  find  two  young  men 
like  these  both  rather  out  of  the  main  current  of 
colonial  activity  "making  fortunes"  at  the  law. 
Wythe  and  Pendleton  were  the  great  lawyers  who 
received  twice  as  much  from  their  clients;  and 
one  must  remember  five  thousand  a  year  in  Vir 
ginia  in  1772  was  the  equivalent  of  twenty 
thousand  of  our  money.  But  Virginia  was  a 
great  country  at  that  time  and  there  was  much 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  II 

"lawing"  about  entails  and  "negro  property"  and 
land  titles.  The  hill  counties  of  Louisa  and 
Amherst  and  Pittsylvania  were  teeming  with 
a  restless  population  and  most  gentlemen  of  the 
older  lowland  counties  had  patents  to  great  tracts 
of  land  in  Watauga,  Kentucky  or  Augusta,  names 
which  in  Jefferson's  day  suggested  the  great  areas 
which  we  know  respectively  as  Tennessee,  Ken-, 
tucky  and  West  Virginia,  and  the  lawyers  had 
much  to  do  to  "keep  things  straight"  or  perhaps 
to  tangle  matters  so  that  another  generation  of 
lawyers  would  be  needed  to  clear  them  up. 

Five  years  after  Jefferson  left  William  and 
Mary  and  when  his  estate  had  increased  from 
1900  acres  of  land  to  5000  and  his  negroes  from 
thirty  to  fifty  in  number,  he  married  Mrs.  Skelton, 
widow  of  a  prominent  lowlander  and  daughter  of 
a  wealthy  planter  and  lawyer  of  James  City 
county.  The  dowry  of  the  wife  was  equal  to  the 
husband's  entire  estate  and  the  Virginian  of  that 
day  may  have  looked  upon  the  young  man  from 
the  upper  Rivanna  as  a  "captain  of  industry," 
dangerous  almost  to  the  security  of  the  state. 
From  law  $3000  a  year  and  from  the  plantation 


12  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

$2000,  not  to  speak  of  the  increase  of  the  negroes  ! 
And  then  to  marry  a  wife  whose  property  was 
quite  as  great  as  his.  An  income  of  $9000  or 
$10,000  a  year,  or  $25,000  of  our  money.  Jefferson 
was  in  fact  an  important  man  in  Virginia  when  he 
began  his  beautiful  house  on  Monticello  at  the  out 
break  of  the  Revolution.  While  Jefferson  was  an 
eminent  lawyer  in  1774  and  his  income  from  his 
profession  was  steadily  increasing,  he  was  not  a 
real  lawyer;  he  did  not  love  the  law  nor  even 
respect  it  as  a  calling.  His  real  vocation  was  that 
of  a  farmery  relatively  small  as  was  the  income 
from  that  source  His  deliberate  opinion  was : 
"Those  who  labor  in  the  earth  are  the  chosen  peo 
ple  of  God,  if  ever  he  had  a  chosen  people;  whose 
breasts  he  has  made  his  peculiar  deposit  for  sub 
stantial  and  genuine  virtue."  And  if  Jefferson 
was  disqualified  for  law  as  a  calling  he  was 
still  less  fitted  for  politics — the  one  thing  which 
the  world  associates  with  his  name. 

II 

But  men's  lives  are  not  their  own,  "rough  hew 
them  as  they  may."     Jefferson  was  not  to  be 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  13 

merely  an  Albemarle  planter  and  master,  ship 
ping  his  tobacco  and  corn  down  the  Rivanna  each 
autumn  and  receiving  from  his  Richmond  factor 
his  annual  draft  on  some  stable  English  or 
northern  bank.  This  young  man  already  pre 
eminent  for  his  wealth,  devoted  to  his  farm  and 
his  plain  farmer  neighbors,  was  just  the  man  to 
send  down  to  Williamsburg  in  1773  to  help  the 
burgesses  properly  resist  the  encroachments  of 
the  mother  country  upon  the  interests  of  the  col 
onies.  Already  Jefferson  had  seen  a  little  of 
public  life;  he  had  been  sent  on  the  same  mission 
to  the  capital  in  1769  but  the  legislature  was 
dismissed  by  his  quondam  friend,  the  Governor, 
in  such  short  order  that  the  young  member  from 
Albemarle  hardly  had  time  to  draft  a  set  of  reso 
lutions,  though  he  had  joined  the  recalcitrant 
members  in  the  Raleigh  tavern  and  there  signed 
the  famous  non-importation  agreement  which  was 
to  give  the  British  ministry  no  end  of  trouble. 

But  in  1773  the  mature  Jefferson  was  in  Will 
iamsburg  ;  then  his  great  career  began  and  he  was 
never  again  to  be  either  lawyer  or  farmer  but 
statesman.  In  order  to  get  into  the  drift  of  things 


i4  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

in  Virginia  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  it  is 
necessary  to  review  briefly  the  work  of  Patrick 
Henry.  That  then  famous  man  had  begun  his 
career  in  Hanover  by  embracing  the  cause  of  the 
Presbyterian  preachers  and  missionaries  who 
were  dealing  the  established  church  and  ministry 
such  sturdy  blows  that  many  wise  heads  were 
wondering  what  to  do  with  the  arrant  dissenters. 
A  little  later  another  pest  was  added :  the  Baptists, 
singing,  praying  and  weeping,  invaded  conserva 
tive,  respectable  "Tidewater"  and  to  these  were 
added  the  Methodists  in  1772  who  threatened  to 
capture  all  the  southside  counties.1  Rousing 
themselves  to  the  danger  of  their  situation  the 
clergy  and  the  vestries  of  the  Establishment  under 
took  now  to  defend  themselves.  The  dissenting 
preachers  were  declared  to  be  disturbers  of  the 
peace  and  thrust  into  noisome  prisons  in  a  dozen 
counties.  But  the  people  flocked  to  the  prison 
doors  to  hear  the  "good  tidings."  A  revolution 
was  already  on  and  there  was  no  stopping  it. 
What  Henry  had  done  was  first  to  arouse  the 

1  "Southside"  in  Virginia  refers  to  the  large  strip  of 
country  south  of  the  James  river  and  east  of  the  Blue 
Ridge  mountains. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  15 

anger  of  the  people  against  the  established  church 
and  then  to  turn  the  tide  of  discontent  and  re 
sentment  from  the  old  church  toward  the  cumber-  v 
some  reactionary  system  of  government  which  the 
English  ministry  had  long  toyed  with  in  America. 
Henry  was  also  a  "populist." 

When  he  first  aspired  to  a  seat  in  the  House 
of  Burgesses,  his  aristocratic  neighbors  in  Han 
over  swore  that  such  a  man  should  never  disgrace 
their  old  county,  that  he  could  never  be  elected 
from  Hanover.  Henry,  who  was  already  a 
western  man  in  spirit  moved  to  Louisa,  the  back 
woods  county  just  west  of  Hanover  where  young 
Jefferson  had  but  recently  learned  his  Greek  and 
Latin  forms.  Henry  had  worn  buckskin  breeches 
as  a  hunter;  he  now  put  them  on  as  a  politician. 
He  knew  the  language  of  the  backwoods  already ; 
he  now  made  it  his  own  and  never  afterward 
spoke  correctly  the  vernacular  of  the  privileged, 
of  the  Hanover  gentry  who  preferred  his  exile  to 
the  disgrace  of  his  elevation  in  their  community : 
Henry  became  a  burgess  from  the  western 
county  and  a  leader  of  the  whole  up-country, 
the  "Qo'hees,"  against  the  compact  "Tidewater," 


16    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

the  "Tuckahoes."  It  was  the  West  against  the 
East,  the  dissenter  in  religion  against  the  estab 
lished  and  formal  church. 

What  followed  the  advent  of  Henry  in  Virginia 
politics  was  the  mobilization  of  the  middle  classes 
in  the  whole  colony  as  well  as  the  sturdy  back 
woodsmen.  There  were  thirty-five  counties  on 
the  lower  reaches  of  the  Virginia  rivers,  bays  and 
inlets  and  twenty-nine  among  the  hills  and  moun 
tains.  But  not  all  the  thirty-five  were  in  the 
hands  of  the  plantation  lords,  who  never  made 
up  a  twentieth  of  the  Virginia  people,  though  a 
majority  of  all  the  counties  were  probably  on  the 
side  of  the  King  and  Church  in  1765 ;  and  it  had 
not  been  difficult  for  John  Robinson,  the  Speaker 
of  the  House,  to  control  legislation  in  the  interest 
of  the  East  and  of  the  old  order  and  to  suppress 
most  popular  movements  from  the  West.  But  the 
hold  of  the  East  upon  the  community  was  broken 
by  an  alliance  which  Henry  made  with  Richard 
Henry  Lee  who  represented  a  discontented  ele 
ment  of  the  old  order.  Richard  Henry  Lee  was 
very  able  and  very  ambitious.  He  had  been 
disappointed  in  his  campaign  of  1762  for  a  place 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  17 

in  the  council  and  again  for  the  appointment  as 
stamp  collector  in  1764;  moreover  Washington 
of  the  Northern  Neck  had  been  preferred  in  1755 
as  the  leader  of  the  Virginia  forces  in  the  Brad- 
dock  campaign  while  Lee,  a  representative  of  a 
greater  house,  had  been  openly  snubbed  by  Govern 
or  Dinwiddie  and  General  Braddock.  Lee  had 
not  been  in  a  good  humor  these  ten  years  past. 
In  1763  he  began  an  investigation  into  the  con 
duct  of  Speaker  Robinson  who  was  at  the  same 
time  Treasurer  of  the  colony.  The  investigation 
dragged  on  two  or  three  years.  Henry  supported 
Lee;  the  up-country  was  married  to  the  insur 
gent  element  of  the  East.  The  result  was  that 
Robinson  was  shown  to  have  been  a  lender  of  the 
public  funds,  to  the  extent  of  £103,000  procla 
mation  money,  without  security.  Not  only  so ;  the 
money  had  been  loaned  to  needy  politicians  who 
were  members  of  the  burgesses  and  who  had 
always  "stood  by"  the  machine.  Robinson  had 
long  been  dictator  in  the  House  and  he,  not  the 
"free  burgesses,"  had  made  the  laws.  Up-coun 
try  men  now  saw  why  it  had  been  impossible 
to  get  new  counties  created  in  their  region,  why 


i8  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

the  East  had  been  so  indifferent  to  protecting 
the  western  country  against  the  Indians;  and  the 
middle  class  population  who  composed  the  major 
ity  even  in  the  Tidewater  counties  sympathized 
with  the  West,  and,  now  that  their  old  machine 
was  shown  to  have  been  honeycombed  with  cor 
ruption,  they  joined  the  standards  of  Henry  and 
Lee.  The  Speaker  was  manfully  supported  by  the 
"people  of  quality,"  the  Braxtons  and  Corbins 
and  even  by  Pendleton,  a  fair-minded  man  but 
always  a  stickler  for  the  forms  of  law.  Rob 
inson  died  under  a  cloud  and  his  partisans  did 
not  rally  again  until  the  close  of  the  Revolution. 
His  property  was  seized  in  part  by  the  Colony, 
but  the  bulk  of  the  great  embezzlement  was  never 
repaid. 

When  Jefferson  was  a  college  boy  he  was  in 
sympathy  with  the  new  West  and  was  a  friend  of 
Henry  though  a  younger  man  by  ten  years.  The 
party  which  Henry  and  Lee  had  created  and 
which  was  still  in  power  when  the  great  quarrel 
with  England  came  to  a  crisis  was  composed 
of  the  people  of  the  twenty-one  counties  of  Vir 
ginia  which  covered  the  area  now  known  as  the 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  19 

Piedmont  and  extended  to  the  Redstone  settle 
ments  on  the  Monongahela  and  the  Ohio  in  the 
northwest  and  to  the  Watauga  settlements  in  the 
southwest.  Small  farmers  along  the  upper  rivers, 
tobacco  growers  from  the  ridges  between,  hunters 
and  trappers  from  the  slopes  of  the  Alleghanies 
and  the  hitherto  inert  and  unorganized  mass 
of  small  proprietors  and  slave-owners  from  the 
old  counties,  made  up  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
party — a  party  with  which  the  great  majority 
of  the  people  sympathized  and  acted  for  ten  years 
after  1769.  The  leaders  were  first  of  all  Henry, 
then  Richard  Henry  Lee  and  George  Mason,  both 
aristocrats  but  patriots  at  the  same  time.  Wash 
ington,  notwithstanding  his  relations  with  Lee, 
gradually  came  over,  though  many  of  his  friends 
had  been,  and  some  still  remained,  connected  with 
the  men  who  had  formerly  ruled  Virginia. 
Between  1769  and  1779  Henry  and  Lee  with 
their  powerful  following  ruled  the  burgesses  or 
the  legislature  as  completely  as  had  Robinson 
and  his  group. 

Jefferson  had  grown  up  in  this  party;  he  was 
close  to  Henry ;  his  county  and  neighboring  coun- 


20    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

ties  worshiped  the  great  orator  who  had  made 
Virginia  famous  for  eloquence;  and  his  younger 
friends  Dabney  Carr  and  "Jimmie"  Madison 
were  of  the  same  mind.  As  a  lieutenant  of 
Henry  the  young  scholar  from  Albemarle  entered 
politics  in  1774  and  he  was  a  follower  of  no 
mean  sort,  a  student,  a  keen  lawyer,  a  good 
writer  and  popular  with  the  common  people. 
Many  long  years  the  minority  had  struggled 
for  a  hearing;  the  western  counties  had  grad 
ually  grown  to  be  the  most  populous;  they 
had  filled  up  with  Scotch-Irish  from  Penn 
sylvania  and  Germans  from  the  Palatinate  most 
of  whom  were  serious  minded  men  who  built 
log  churches  on  the  frontier,  established  schools, 
like  Liberty  Academy,  in  the  wilderness,  and  sent 
to  Princeton  for  their  preachers  and  teachers. 
They  believed  in  God  as  creator  of  the  universe, 
a  future  state  of  rewards  and  punishments  and 
the  mystery  of  the  Trinity,  and  if  they  got  a 
chance,  like  the  Puritans  of  New  England,  they 
would  put  these  ideas  into  their  organic  law,1 

1  Witness    the    first    constitution    of   Tennessee,    also 
that  of  North  Carolina. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  21 

or  compel  their  opponents  to  accept  their  creed. 
Their  eastern  allies  were  largely  Baptists  who 
knew  what  persecution  for  conscience  sake  was 
and  who,  if  their  voice  could  be  heard,  would 
make  religious  freedom  a  part  of  the  constitution. 
Verily  these  were  not  the  men  who  had  made 
Virginia  in  the  past;  they  were  the  men,  though, 
who  were  to  make  the  Virginia  of  1800. 

Still  the  people  who  looked  to  Princeton  as  a 
source  of  all  religious  orthodoxy  and  found  their 
cultural  ideas  in  the  neighborhood  of  Philadelphia 
could  never  have  made  Virginia  great.  Neither 
could  the  numerous  but  illiterate  Baptists  with 
their  simple-minded  pastors  have  erected  the  great 
social  fabric  which  the  world  came  to  know  as 
Virginia.  It  required  leadership,  knowledge  of 
the  world,  philosophy ;  and  these  elements  Jeffer 
son  and  his  group,  Madison,  John  Taylor  and 
Spencer  Roane,  all  trained  in  the  best  schools  of 
the  time,  students  and  philosophers  by  nature,  sup 
plied.  These  younger  men,  like  Henry,  only 
infinitely  better  grounded  in  the  learning  of  the 
__world,  were  admirers  of  the  insurgent  Whigs  of 
England,  the  fallen  Earl  of  Chatham,  the  great 


22    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

orator  Burke  and  his  rival  the  brilliant  Fox. 
The  ideals  of  the  best  elements  of  the  Whig  party 
in  England  were,  grafted  upon  the  rough  honesty 
and  unyielding  purpose  of  the  Virginia  up-coun 
try.  Such  was  the  party  which  held  the  upper 
hand  in  Virginia  when  Massachusetts  cried  aloud 
for  help  in  1774  and  it  need  not  be  added  the  cry 
fell  not  upon  deaf  ears.  The  young  party  was 
cousin-german  to  New  England.  Princeton  and 
Yale  were  close  akin  and  the  religious  ideals  of 
Massachusetts  were  only  another  brand  of  the 
stern  Calvinism  which  dominated  the  rank  and 
file  of  Virginia. 

But  Jefferson  was  no  Calvinist,  even  if  Henry 
was;  and  Madison  was  a  member  of  the  estab 
lished  church.  However,  both  Jefferson  and 
— •  Madison  believed  in  the  new  doctrine  of  popular 
rule.  What  the  majority  wished  was  law  to 
them;  they  believed  in  the  people  as  New  Eng- 
landers  did  not.  And  the  first  article  of  Henry's 
creed  was  majority  rule — a  majority  of  all  the 
people  who  had  a  share  in  the  commonwealth. 
Recent  history  in  Virginia  compelled  this  and 
Whig  teaching  in  England  tended  the  same  way. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  23 

It  is  not  difficult  then  to  see  how  the  great 
principle    of   Jefferson's    life — absolute    faith    in 

""l  democracy — came  to  him.  He  was  the  product 
of  the  first  West  in  American  history;  he  grew 
up  with  men  who  ruled  their  country  well,  who 
fought  the  Indians  valiantly,  who  made  of  a  vast 
wilderness  a  smiling  garden  and  most  of  whose 
ills  were  due  to  the  former  absence  of  self  govern- 

_  ment  in  the  larger  affairs  of  Virginia  life. 
Jefferson  loved  his  backwoods  neighbors  and  he  in 
turn  was  loved  by  them.  There  was  perfect  sym 
pathy.  "The  man  who  follows  the  daily  round 
of  agriculture  is  God's  noblest  handiwork." 

The  events  of  1774  and  1775  made  the  Virginia 
leaders  world  figures  and  Jefferson,  not  Henry, 

_was  soon  to  become  the  author  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  the  champion  before  mankind 
of  the  oppressed.  Henry  essayed  the  national 
role  in  1774;  but  he  was  clearly  the  man  to  lead 
the  party  at  home,  not  in  the  greater  arena.  Lee 
was  in  the  congress  of  1776  and  as  the  oldest 
and  most  aristocratic  member  of  the  delegation, 
he  introduced  the  resolution  for  independence 
and  logically  he  should  have  headed  the  committee 


24    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

which  drafted  the  famous  Declaration.  But  the  old 
feud  with  the  Washingtons  was  not  yet  quieted. 
It  would  have  been  a  great  risk  to  allow  Lee  too 
much  prominence  and  the  plan  to  substitute  Jef 
ferson  was  proposed  and  Lee  found  it  necessary 
to  hasten  off  to  Virginia  to  "mend  his  political 
fences."  Jefferson,  Henry  and  Washington  were 
on  good  terms.  Washington's  friends  and,  what 
was  more  important,  the  large  group  of  old  fami 
lies  still  smarting  under  the  chastisement  which 
Lee  had  given  them  in  1765-66  were  spared  the 
humiliation  of  seeing  the  renegade  Lee  a  national 
hero.  Devious  are  the  ways  of  high  politics. 
Notwithstanding  the  intrigue  and  wire-pulling 
which  was  employed  to  retire  Lee  at  that  time, 
Jefferson  was  entirely  worthy  of  the  honor  which 
came  to  him — he  was  indeed  the  man  of  all  Vir 
ginians  to  become  the  spokesman  of  America; 
the  language  of  the  Declaration  was  the  language 
of  dissent  and  complaint  which  had  been  heard  in 
Virginia  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  Jefferson 
could  well  lead  a  fight  against  the  same  kind  of 
privilege  and  arbitrary  power  as  applied  to  all 
America  which  he  and  his  neighbors  had  over- 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  25 

thrown  in  Virginia.  The  cause  of  the  West  in 
Virginia  was  the  cause  of  America  before  the 
world. 

But  the  forces  which  Henry  and  Lee  had  over 
thrown  were  not  to  be  put  aside  at  a  single  brush 
of  the  political  besom.  Henry  was  not  the  mas 
ter  in  Virginia,  though  the  most  powerful  single 
individual.  Even  with  his  co-workers,  Mason  and 
Lee,  he  still  fell  short  of  the  power  which  certain 
present-day  "bosses"  exercise,  as  was  clearly 
shown  in  1775  when,  raising  his  regiment  of 
Hanover  and  Louisa  militia,  he  seized  the  powder 
which  Governor  Dunmore  was  about  to  employ 
against  the  revolutionists.  All  eyes  were  upon 
the  zealous  self-made  colonel  and  so  popular  was 
the  up-country  leader  that  it  was  impossible  to  pre 
vent  the  convention  then  in  session  from  making 
him  general  of  the  Virginia  troops.  That  Henry 
was  a  good  military  chieftain  may  well  be 
doubted;  but  his  old  time  enemies  were  deter 
mined  he  should  have  no  chance  to  prove  this 
point.  Henry's  brother-in-law,  William  Campbell, 
with  no  military  training  except  what  the  back 
woods  afforded,  won  the  battle  of  Kings  Moun- 


26    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

tain  in  1780  and  his  friend,  George  Rogers  Clark, 
manifested  all  the  qualities  of  a  good  general 
in  his  famous  campaign  in  the  Northwest  in 
1779.  When  Henry  was  placed  in  command  by 
the  convention  of  the  new  state  a  committee 
of  safety  was  appointed  by  the  same  delegates 
of  the  people,  a  majority  of  whom  were  Henry's 
enemies  and  some  of  whom  had  been  connected 
with  the  Robinson  scandal;  Edmund  Pendleton 
was  its  chairman.  The  committee  of  safety  had 
general  oversight  of  the  defenses  of  Virginia 
in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1775  when  Sir 
Henry  Clinton  and  Sir  Peter  Parker  planned 
and  sought  to  execute  the  first  great  scheme  for 
the  conquest  of  the  South.  Things  were  so  man 
aged  by  Pendleton  and  his  committee  that  ardent 
and  popular  Henry  never  heard  a  gunshot, 
while  a  subordinate,  Colonel  Woodford,  was  put 
into  practical  command  of  the  troops  which 
were  nominally  subject  only  to  Henry's  orders! 
Woodford  won  the  first  victory  in  the  South  at 
Great  Bridge  near  Norfolk  on  December  9,  1775, 
while  Henry  was  compelled  to  lie  idle  at  Will- 
iamsburg.  There  was  not  to  be  any  "General 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  27 

Henry"  in  Virginia  though  "Mr.  Henry"  might 
still  count  for  much. 

This  was  the  first  setback  to  Henry's  forward 
and  vigorous  program;  Lee's  humiliation  came  a 
little  later.  The  men,  like  Edmund  Pendleton, 
who  managed  both  schemes,  thoroughly  enjoyed 
their  brief  success.  It  began  to  look  as  if  the 
"interests"  of  the  old  days  would  govern  revolu 
tionary  Virginia.  The  reply  of  the  up-country 
party  to  this  treatment  of  their  hero  was  his  elec 
tion  by  the  next  convention  to  the  governorship 
of  the  state,  to  the  position  just  vacated  by  His 
Majesty's  royal  representative,  Lord  Dunmore — 
a  very  high  honor  and  next  to  Washington's  the 
most  important  position  in  America  in  1776. 
The  reactionaries  had  played  their  game  too  well. 

But  the  great  work  of  1776  in  Virginia  was  the 
framing  of  the  fundamental  law  of  the  new  state 
— the  constitution  which  was  to  be  the  model 
for  the  next  seventy-five  years  in  most  southern 
and  western  communities,  faulty  as  it  turned  out 
to  be  in  the  important  matter  of  representation. 
Henry  and  Lee  and  Mason  were  agreed  that  all 
the  old  bulwarks  of  the  English  commons  should 


28  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

be  re-erected  in  Virginia — and  among  them  the 
noble  Bill,  of  Rights  was  created,  and  was  made 
law  by  the  convention,  Henry  being  responsible 
for  the  clauses  bearing  upon  religious  liberty  and 
Mason  for  the  older  ideas  of  freedom  of  speech, 
press  and  the  right  of  revolution.  The  constitu- 
,  tion  of  Virginia  of  1776  was  wonderfully  like  the 
program  of  the  English  revolution  of  1688  and 
many  passages  of  the  Bill  of  Rights  were  copied 
verbatim  from  Locke's  Essay  on  Government. 
There  was  nothing  original  in  all  the  talk  about 
"trial  by  jury,"  the  "right  of  revolution"  and  of 
"redress  of  grievances."  The  older  leaders  like 
Pendleton  and  the  reactionaries  from  the  coast 
counties  could  listen  to  agitation  of  that  sort  as 
well  as  any.  What  aroused  the  ire  of  the  benefi 
ciaries  of  the  system  of  entail  and  primogeniture, 
of  slavery  and  great  estates,  was  the  demand  for 
proportional  representation  on  the  part  of  the 
up-country.  For  a  hundred  years  the  small  group 
of  eastern  planters  had  denied  fair  representation 
to  the  people  on  the  border,  the  people  who  fought 
the  Indians,  cleared  the  lands  and  made  Virginia 
prosperous.  In  1776  they  had  a  majority  of  the 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  29 

voters,  of  the  actual  landowners;  trieir  counties 
were  large,  however,  and  entitled  only  to  the  same 
number  of  delegates  to  the  Assembly  as  the  small 
Tidewater  counties.  They  had  never  been  able 
to  bring  the  East  to  an  agreement  about  the  size 
of  the  county.  What  they  wanted  was  a  greater 
vote  in  the  law-making  body — a  vote  commen 
surate  with  their  numerical  and  fighting  strength ; 
but  in  1776  they  had  only  twenty-nine  counties 
as  against  the  thirty-five  of  the  East  and  whenever 
a  new  western  county  was  created  a  new  eastern 
must  also  be  created  regardless  of  the  meager 
population  of  the  latter. 

Jefferson,  not  in  the  convention,  but  a  member 
of  the  congress  at  Philadelphia  and  just  now 
writing  the  famous  Declaration,  was  one  of  the 
leaders  in  Virginia  who  held  "radical"  views  on 
the  subjects  of  suffrage  and  representation.  He 
believed  in  manhood  suffrage  and  proportional 
representation  of  all  the  voters  and  he  took  the  risk 
of  sending  to  Williamsburg  a  draft  of  a  constitu 
tion  embodying  his  views.1  This  proposed  con- 

1  Works   of   Thomas   Jefferson,    (Ford's   Fed.    Ed.)    II, 
I58.-I83. 


30  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

stitution  would  have  destroyed  forever  the  power 
of  the  privileged  planters.  Representation  in  the 
House  was  to  be  in  proportion  to  population  and 
the  representatives  were  to  elect  the  members  of 
the  Senate.  The  House  was  also  to  elect  the  Gov 
ernor.  .With  the  Executive  and  the  Senate  depend 
ent  upon  representatives  elected  annually  by  the 
people,  and  with  the  inequalities  of  the  old  system 
of  county  representation  "done  away"  there  would 
have  been  little  chance  for  the  old  regime  ever 
again  to  control  affairs  in  Virginia — slavery,  en 
tails  and  primogeniture  would  all  have  gone  to 
gether  in  a  few  short  years  and  none  foresaw  this 
more  clearly  than  Jefferson,  the  great  slave-master. 
Not  even  Henry  could  stand  for  so  much 
democracy  as  this;  Lee  could  not  be  expected  to 
admire  the  man  who  was  about  to  harvest  the 
fame  which  was  properly  his;  and  Mason  was 
content  to  urge  his  English  ideas  of  trial  by  jury, 
right  of  revolution  and  habeas  corpus.  The  old 
party,  the  "Tuckahoes"  of  1766,  rallied  their 
whole  strength  against  any  such  plan  as  this  which 
to  them  would  have  meant  the  utter  ruin  of  all 
"vested  interests,"  the  subjugation  of  "gentlemen 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  31 

of  family"  to  the  "ruffians  of  the  West."  Jeffer- 
«— -son's  democratic  ideas  received  scant  courtesy 
from  even  a  revolutionary  convention  which  was 
itself  indirectly  an  up-country  product.  The  out- 
^come  was  a  constitution  which  left  the  power  of 
the  new  state  in  the  hands  of  the  East  and  the 
opponents  of  all  that  Henry  and  Jefferson  stood 
for;  there  was  some  juggling  of  representation,  a 
district  system  which  appeared  to  make  substan 
tial  concession  to  the  just  demands  of  the  West; 
but  when,  a  year  or  two  later,  the  revolutionary 
ardor  was  somewhat  abated,  it  was  found  that 
__lh€  new  system  simply  perpetuated  the  old — the 
East  in  the  name  of  "property"  had  the  majority 
of  delegates  in  both  houses  and  since  the  executive 
was  chosen  by  the  legislature  in  joint  session  the 
governor  was  invariably  friendly  to  the  East. 

There  was  much  talk  of  recalling  Jefferson  from 
his  place  in  Philadelphia1  and  in  fact  the  vote  he 
received  was  so  small  that  he,  the  leader  of  the 
Virginia  delegation,  resigned  rather  than  come 
in  "next  to  the  lag."  He  had  not  yet  reaped  the 
harvest  of  fame  which  was  to  come  from  his 
1  Works  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  II,  198. 


32  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

authorship  of  the  Declaration  and  his  enemies 
had  thus  chosen  their  only  chance  to  humiliate 
him. 

The  time  had  come  for  the  quiet  planter  of 
Albemarle  to  make  his  own  program  and  to  fight 
for  it  while  the  populous  West  was  at  his  back 
and  when  his  fame  was  still  on  the  increase.  He 
prepared  himself  and  in  the  summer  of  1776 
"~he  stood  for  election  to  the  House  of  Representa 
tives  in  Albemarle.  It  was  now  unnecessary  for 
him  to  stand  all  day  at  the  polls  and  bow  politely 
to  each  man  who  voted  for  him  and  to  regale  all 
who  were  thirsty  with  copious  draughts  from  his 
"huge  bowl  of  punch."  There  was  no  opposition 
in  Albemarle  and  a  half  dozen  other  counties  in 
the  up-country  would  gladly  have  honored  him 
with  their  votes. 

Ill 

Once  in  the  legislature  he  began  quietly  his 
policy  of  tearing  up  the  "interests"  root  and 
branch.  Only  a  half  year  before  the  conserva 
tives  and  the  reactionaries  had  combined  to 
humiliate  him;  it  would  have  been  more  than 
human  in  him  not  to  enjoy  seeing  his  opponents 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  33 

writhe  and  wriggle  as  he  marshalled  the  necessary 
majorities  for  his  plan,  first  to  do  away  with 
entails,  second  to  make  unlawful  the  long  practice 
of  primogeniture,  or  the  bestowal  upon  the  oldest 
son  of  the  landed  estates  of  deceased  property 
owners;  the  hoary  shelter  of  the  privileged  order 
in  Virginia,  the  established  church,  was  next 
attacked  and  partially  overthrown ;  the  fourth  item 
on  his  list  of  reforms,  brought  down  from  the 
up-country,  was  the  gradual  abolition  of  slavery — 
having  succeeded  in  most  of  what  he  had  pre 
sented,  he  hoped  to  carry  this  too  and  by  the  votes 
of  slaveholders  like  himself!  But  to  bring  the 
great  lowland  planters  to  "split"  on  this  question, 
as  they  had  done  on  the  others,  and  to  allow  the 
very  basis  of  their  fabric  to  be  undermined  was 
too  much.  Slavery  remained  to  curse  America 
for  a  hundred  years  yet.  Finally  he  proposed  a 
system  of  public  free  schools — still  another  item 
in  the  western  economy — for  Virginia,  which  was 
to  be  headed  by  William  and  Mary  College  as 
a  state  university.  In  this  he  scarcely  hoped  to 
succeed  and  of  course  he  failed. 

One  naturally  inquires  how  such  a  thorough- 
3 


34  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

going  reform  could  be  accomplished  or  set  in 
motion  at  a  single  session  of  the  legislature. 
Virginia  was  still  filled  with  the  enthusiastic 
idealism  which  swept  most  of  the  people  off  their 
feet,  an  idealism  which  seized  upon  practical  and 
conservative  men  like  Washington  as  well  as 
upon  "dreamers"  of  the  type  of  Jefferson.  It 
was  a  time  not  unlike  the  famous  Fifth  of 
August,  1789,  in  France,  which  brought  still 
greater  reforms  for  that  country.  Henry  had 
been  preparing  the  way  for  ten  years;  the  up- 
country  leaders  and  the  low-country  dissenters 
had  voted  and  prayed  for  the  same  kind  of  thing 
since  the  close  of  the  "old  French"  war ;  and  the 
great  glittering  Declaration,  now  resounding 
around  the  world,  had  put  on  the  finishing  stroke. 
It  was  the  only  time  such  work  could  be  done  and 
Jefferson  was  the  one  man  to  lead.  Rare  indeed 
have  been  the  parallels  to  these  reforms  in  the 
history  of  the  world. 

Short  sighted  indeed  was  the  policy  of  humil 
iating  the  radical  author  of  a  real  constitution  in 
1776,  and  perhaps  Edmund  Pendleton  and  Wilson 
C.  Nicholas  meditated  remorsefully  on  their  fool- 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  35 

ish  work  of  putting  this  young  man  out  of 
congress  only  to  have  him  come  down  from  the 
hills  to  the  Assembly  and  demolish  them — with 
his  sledge  hammer  blows ! 

There  were  now  two  stars  in  the  Virginia 
firmament  and  both  were  representatives  of  the 
up-country.  Could  Governor  Henry  and  the 
author  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  con- 
tinue  to  live  peaceably  in  Virginia  and  lead  the 
same  party?  Possibly,  but  not  likely. 

Already  the  great  governor  and  popular  tribune 
was  embarrassed  and  two  years  later  when  Jef 
ferson  became  governor  the  friends  of  the  older 
man  were  careful  to  put  stumbling  blocks  in  the 
way  of  the  popular  young  executive  and  from 
this  time  to  the  end  of  their  lives  the  two 
not  friends.  Jefferson  thought  Henry  an  un 
learned  and  merely  rhetorical  orator  while  Henry 
regarded  Jefferson  as  a  dangerous  innovator  and 
"infidel".  But  one  or  the  other  must  rule  the 
party  and  Henry  was  undoubtedly  the  better 
man  for  that. 

From  the  introduction  of  Jefferson's  radical 
program  in  1776  Henry  was  drawn  somewhat 


36     STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

from  the  strong  position  of  former  years.  He  did 
nothing  to  aid  Jefferson's  school  system;  though 
he  never  defended  slavery,  he  was  unwilling  to 
risk  his  popularity  in  an  effort  to  destroy  it;  and 
he  actually  opposed  Jefferson's  scheme  of  dises 
tablishing  the  Church,  although  he  had  won  his 
fame  in  fighting 'the  Church.  It  was  clear  to  wiser 
heads  that  Henry  and  Jefferson  did  not  agree 
and  that  of  the  two  the  latter  was  the  real 
reformer.  Had  these  two  men  been  able  to  work 
together  in  the  momentous  revolutionary  epoch 
how  different  might  have  been  the  course  of 
American  history ! 

Henry  now  settled  in  the  West  and  for  a  time 
he  contemplated  emigrating  to  Kentucky — Jef 
ferson  who  succeeded  to  the  office  of  governor 
in  1779  proved  half-a-failure  as  an  administrator 
and  Henry's  friends  were  not  above  demanding 
an  investigation  which  it  was  expected  would  ruin 
him  as  a  public  man.  The  publicity  which  was 
.heaped  upon  the  failure  of  Jefferson  to  protect 
Virginia  from  invasion  in  1781  almost  destroyed 
the  popularity  ofcthe  retiring  governor.  In  1783 
he  was  put  "out  in  the  cold,"  i.  e.  he  was  sent 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  37 

to  the  already  discredited  congress  of  the  Con1- 
federation.  This  had  been  the  scene  of  his  great 
est  success  and  he  was  not  averse  to  taking  up 
with  his  young  and  devoted  friend,  Madison, 
the  cause  of  the  nascent  nation.  He  accepted 
the  call  which  he  knew  was  intended  as  a  sort 
of  balm  to  his  wounded  feelings — an  easy  "let 
down"  for  a  man  who  had  been  a  victim  of  the 
circumstances  of  the  late  Revolution.  Little  did 
he  or  his  enemies  think  that  he  would  ever  again 
be  able  to  strike  such  heavy  blows  as  he  had 
struck  in  1776  and  1777. 

In  congress,  however,  he  fought  so  well  the 
cause  of  Virginia  in  her  struggle  with  the  north 
ern  states  to  retain  her  vast  western  possessions 
that  even  Henry  warmed  toward  him  again.  Jef 
ferson's  learning,  his  talent  at  arranging  differ 
ences,  of  appearing  to  yield  without  really  yield 
ing,  were  indispensable  to  Virginia  at  this  stage  of 
her  history.  It  was  Jefferson  whose  practical  turn 
of  mind  invented  our  system  of  coinage  units  and 
saved  us  from  the  cumbersome  method  of  the  Eng 
lish  or  of  the  humorous  scheme  proposed  by  Rob 
ert  Morris.  He  worked  out  with  Madison  the  final 


38    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

plan  upon  which  Virginia  ceded  her  western  lands 
to  congress  and  he  was  the  one  who  first  and  last 
insisted  that  slavery  should  never  be  permitted 
to  gain  a  foothold  north  of  the  Ohio.  Notable 
indeed  were  the  services  of  the  banished  politi 
cian.  And  finally  when  the  peace  came  and  the 
treaties  were  all  ratified,  congress  asked  Jefferson 
to  go  to  France  to  succeed  there  the  famous 
Franklin  who  was  returning  home  to  die. 

However,  Henry  was  again  the  great  man  in 
the  state;  he  absolutely  ruled  the  legislature; 
and  he  was  made  governor  a  second  time  in  1784. 
Mason  and  Lee  came  again  to  the  front  and  this 
time  as  before  Henry  made  a  popular  executive. 
He  fought  now  for  a  protective  tariff  against 
"insidious  English  commerce"  and  on  behalf  of 
the  "infant  industries"  which  he  hoped  to  see 
spring  up  in  the  new  empire.  A  great  figure 
was  Henry  now  as  ever — jealous  of  Virginia's 
fame,  popular  in  manner  and  as  great  an  orator 
as  when  he  began  his  career  of  revolution  twenty 
years  before.  No  man  could  stand  in  the  Old 
Dominion  without  his  actual  or  supposed  friend 
ship.  .Washington  who  never  loved  Henry  made 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  ,\3$ 

v_- 

overtures  to  him  on  behalf  of  his  great  plan  for 
a  national  convention;  Madison  who  had  never 
been  a  close  follower  sought  his  support  and 
acknowledged  his  supremacy.  Jefferson  could 
not  well  sacrifice  his  self-respect  and  forget  or 
forgive  the  events  of  1781 ;  but  he  knew  who 
it  was  that  had  succeeded  to  twice  the  power  in 
Virginia  which  George  III  had  surrendered. 
There  has  seldom  been  a  more  perfect  political 
machine  in  an  American  state  than  that  which 
Henry,  during  his  second  term  as  governor,  had 
at  his  beck  and  call. 

^^It  is  not  surprising  then  that  Jefferson  accepted 
from  congress  in  1784  the  mission  to  France — 
a  post  of  great  honor,  from  the  national  point 
of  view,  but  one  which  the  really  big  men  of 
Virginia,  Henry,  Mason  and  perhaps  even  Lee, 
would  have  declined.  Thus  Jefferson  was  to  get 
'the  very  training  which  he  needed  and  in  the 
service  of  the  nation.  Indeed  his  great  work  had 
been  and  was  to  continue  in  the  cause  of  the 
country,  not  of  Virginia. 

Some  have  said  that  Jefferson's  later  attitude 
toward  the  federal  government  was  due  to  his 


40     STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

absence  from  the  country  during  the  critical 
period  of  1784-1789.  There  may  be  reason  in 
this  but  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  his  later  views 
were  only  an  outgrowth  of  his  earlier  experience, 
a  product  as  well  of  the  highly  complicated 
political  situation  of  Virginia  at  the  time. 

Of  the  long  term  in  France,  of  his  unique 
record  as  a  minister,  or  of  his  influence  in  the 
early  stages  of  the  "great"  Revolution,  there  is 
no  need  to  speak.  Jefferson  returned  to  America 
about  the  time  the  rejuvenated  federal  govern 
ment  with  Washington  at  its  head  went  into 
operation. 

During  Jefferson's  absence  in  Europe  Virginia 
grew  in  wealth  and  power  as  did  no  other  Amer 
ican  commonwealth.  Her  trade  with  Europe 
was  flourishing,  her  teeming  population  had  spread 
far  into  the  west,  Kentucky  was  a  new  state  of 
itself  but  loyal  to  the  Old  Dominion,  the  Redstone 
settlements  counted  near  a  hundred  thousand 
souls,  and  the  Watauga  country,  the  quondam 
state  of  Franklin,  was  half  a  child  of  Virginia. 
And  this  great  domain  of  lowland,  rugged  moun 
tain  and  bounding  prairie — more  than  a  hundred 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  41 

thousand  square  miles — was  still  the  land  of  Pat- 
Henry  whom  the  people  credited  with  having 
brought  on  the  struggle  for  freedom  and  with 
having  done  most  after  the  war  was  over  for  the 
rights  of  the  common  men.  He  had  compelled 
the  nationalists  to  amend  their  constitution  to  suit 
the  popular  demand,  he  had  saved  to  the  West 
the  free  navigation  of  the  Mississippi.  Henry 
became  now  an  intense  particularist  and  he 
turned  his  great  party,  mainly  up-country  and  4  / 
western  men,  overwhelmingly  against  the  growing 
necessity  for  a  real  national  power.  The  west 
erners  and  up-country  men  had  formerly  been 
nationalists  in  tendency,  but  the  threatened  loss 
of  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  and  the 
weakness  of  congress  had  turned  them  to  Vir 
ginia  as  the  only  power  to  protect  their  rights  if 
it  came  to  actual  warfare. 

The  years  1784  to  1788  brought  a  revolution  in 
Virginia  public  sentiment :  the  real  revolutionists, 
the  men  who  had  fought  the  battles  of  the  war 
just  ended,  were  now  particularists,  zealous  for  a 
growing  and  mighty  Virginia;  while  the  former 
conservatives  who  had  always  opposed  the  new 


42    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

counties,  who  had  fought  Henry  in  1775  and  Jef 
ferson  in  1776,  were  now  under  the  leadership  of 

\ 

Washington  and  Jefferson's  young  friend,  Madi 
son,  to  become  the  Federalist  party.  In  other 
/words  the  men  who  had  fought  the  radicals  in 
1776  and  who  ridiculed  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  now  became  the  champions  of  nationality 
'  with  the  idea  of  defending  themselves  against 
the  democracy  of  the  border.  Gentlemen  who 
controlled  their  state  as  never  before,  and  they 
counties  of  eastern  Virginia,  the  rotten  boroughs 
of  that  day,  had  counted  their  strength  and,  with 
Washington  on  their  side,  believed  they  could 
win  against  their  foes.  And  when  the  great 
fight  on  the  adoption  of  the  federal  constitution 
came  in  1788  the  "property"  of  the  East  proved 

victorious.     Eastern  men  who  owned  slaves  now 

Vx 

controlled  their  state  as  never  before  and  they 
were  likely  to  control  the  new  national  adminis 
tration.  The  federal  constitution  actually  guar 
anteed  them  in  their  ownership  of  slaves  and 
1  L^gave  them  increased  representation  in  congress 
because  of  their  "peculiar  property." 

Jefferson  came  back  to  Virginia  more  radical 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  43 

as  to  personal  rights  than  when  he  went  away 
and  to  him  the  necessity  of  breaking  down  all 
class  distinctions  was  imperative.  .What  position 
would  he  take  in  Virginia  politics?  To  join 
Henry  and  his  own  former  followers  would  have 
been  repudiation  of  much  of  his  own  past  work 
and  of  his  closest  friend,  Madison ;  to  join  Wash- 

,  ington  meant  alliance  with   the  men  who  had 
tried  to  destroy  him  and  all  his  program  in  1776. 

He  was  at  heart  a  nationalist,  but  a  leveler.     He 

joined  Washington  and  accepted  a  post  in  the 
cabinet /but  tried  to  escape  the  alliance  with  the 
x  ancient  "Tuckahoes."  The  result  was  that  he, 
with  all  his  address  as  a  compromiser,  gained  few 
friends  among  the  conservatives  and  none  with 
the  Henry  party.  Madison  was  close  to  him,  but 
Grayson,  Monroe  and  Richard  Henry  Lee  must 
have  doubted  either  his  loyalty  to  Virginia  or  his 
honesty  as  a  leader.  The  "old  war  horse"  from 
Red  Hill  held  him  in  contempt. 

But  Jefferson  was  not  reduced  to  the  necessity 
of  making  an  issue  in  order  to  escape  the  dilemma. 

'•-'Hamilton  and  the  extreme  conservatives  now  put 
forward  their  policy  looking  toward  increasing 


44  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

the  powers  and  functions  of  the  federal  govern 
ment  beyond  even  the  implications  of  the 
constitution.  In  1790  the  foreign  obligations 
of  the  former  confederacy,  amounting  to  nearly 
$8,000,000,  were  funded  at  par.  To  this  no 
objection  was  made.  Next  it  was  proposed  to 
issue  government  bonds  to  all  holders  of  domestic 
obligations,  estimated  at  $44,414,085,  which  had 
been  bandied  about  at  a  fourth  or  even  a  tenth 
of  their  face  value  and  most  of  which  obligations 
had  been  bought  up  by  speculators  who  were  now 
urging  upon  congress  the  adoption  of  the  new 
policy.  Finally  it  was  a  part  of  Hamilton's 
scheme  to  have  the  national  government  take 
over  $18,000,000  of  the  state  debts  contracted 
during  the  Revolution.  Virginia  made  no  oppo 
sition  to  the  arrangement  of  the  foreign  debt; 
but  to  the  assumption  at  par  of  the  millions  of 
claims  against  the  confederation  for  which  the 
holders  in  1790  had  paid  only  a  small  fraction 
of  the  face  value,  most  leaders  of  opinion  in  that 
state  made  strenuous  objection.  Madison  voiced 
a  well-nigh  universal  feeling  when  he  spoke  long 
and  ardently  against  this  part  of  the  program 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  45 

of  his  former  friend.  .When,  however,  the  state 
iebt  proposition  came  up  not  only  Virginia  but 
all  the  South,  except  South  Carolina,  revolted, 
for  the  southern  states,  especially  Virginia,  owed 
very  little.  It  was  not  difficult  for  the  plainest 
to  see  that  for  the  nation  to  assume  a  debt 
of  $18,000,000,  two  thirds  of  which  was  owed 
by  the  northern  states,  and  then  tax  all  alike  for 
its  payment  was  unjust. 

This  was  not  all.     At  the  last  session  of  the 

XFirst  Congress  Hamilton  succeeded  in  establish 
ing  a  national  bank  to  which  Virginians  were 
also  universally  opposed.  The  whole  scheme  was 
completed  when  at  the  same  session  in  1791  a 

^federal  excise  tax  of  twenty-five  cents  a  gallon 
should  be  laid  upon  all  whiskey  manufactured 
in  the  country.  This  was  a  particularly  burden- 
some  tax  to  the  backwoods  men,  as  they  were 
accustomed  to  distil  their  grain  and  then  trans 
port  it  to  eastern  markets.  And  Virginia  was 

^  largely  a  back-country  state.  What  was  espe 
cially  irritating  to  Virginia  members  of  congress 
during  all  the  debates  on  these  bills  was  Hamil 
ton's  undisguised  purpose  to  increase  the  powers 


46  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

cX'  of  the  national  government  at  the  expense  of  the 
states.  The  assumption  bill,  the  bank  and  the 
excise  schemes  had,  all,  this  avowed  purpose. 
To  add  to  the  weight  of  unpopularity  of  the  new 
government  Washington  and  Hamilton  and  John 
Adams  assumed  an  importance  and  established 
a  ceremonial  which  the  farmers  of  Virginia  re 
sented.  Henry  declared  on  one  occasion  that  he 
could  not  accept  office  under  the  federal  govern 
ment  because  he  would  not  be  able  at  his  time  of 
life  to  adapt  himself  to  the  regal  manners  of  the 
new  regime. 

Madison  who  had  always  been  hostile  to  Henry 
and  friendly  to  Hamilton  broke  with  the  Federal- 
,  ists.  Jefferson  who  had  been  less  of  a  national 
ist  joined  his  young  friend,  and  the  two  began 
the  organization  in  1792  of  the  party  which  was 
soon  to  embrace  all  the  small  farmers  of  the  South 
and  which  eight  years  later  won  control  of  the 
federal  power  which  Hamilton  had  been  so 
industriously  augmenting.  And  from  1792  to 
1796  the  leaders  of  the  new  party  held  up  to 
ridicule  most  of  the  acts  of  the  Washington  admin 
istration  and  made  great  capital  out  of  the  birth- 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  47 

day  parties  and  other  innocent  social  doings  of 
the  President  and  his  family. 

This,  it  would  seem,  would  have  been  the  occa 
sion  for  Henry  to  take  courage  and  put  himself 
at  the  head  of  the  party  of  resistance  in  Virginia 
and  dispute  with  Jefferson  its  leadership  in  the 
country.  Nothing  of  the  sort  happened.  As: 
soon  as  Jefferson  began  his  opposition  to  the 
national  government  and  to  appeal  to  the  great 
mass  of  country  people  in  Virginia,  the  "old  war 
horse"  of  earlier  days  began  to  seek  out  occasions 
to  express  his  approval  of  Washington,  "the 
great  and  good  man,"  from  whom  He  had 
demanded  an  explanation  of  his  course  in  1788. 
It  was  not  a  long  while  before  the  greatest  of  all 
anti-federalists  was  known  in  Philadelphia  to 
be  a  convert !  And  forthwith  Washington  offered 

(the  former  antagonist  the  highest  office  at  his  com 
mand.  The  outcome  was  that  Henry  became 

t>the  most  enthusiastic  of  Virginia  Federalists  and 
canvassed  for  a  seat  in  the  legislature  at  Wash 
ington's  request  simply  that  he  might  there  oppose 
Jefferson  and  his  friends,  Madison  and  John 
*Taylor,  in  their  efforts  to  have  the  alien  and  sedi- 


48    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

1  tion  laws  repealed.  \  Henry  had  yielded  somewhat 
of  his  principles  in  1776  when  he  supported  a 
constitution  which  sacrificed  his  followers,  the 
small  farmers;  but  he  had  regained  his  immense 
popularity  in  the  struggle  of  1786-1788. 

Now  he  lost  his  following  and  the  young 
upstart,  John  Randolph,  was  listened  to  at  Char 
lotte  Courthouse,  in  April  1798,  as  he  ridiculed 
the  old  statesman.  Jefferson  won  the  place  which 
his  older  rival  had  surrendered  and  Madison  was 
next  in  succession.  Having  retired  from  the 
Washington  administration  at  the  beginning  of 
1794,  Jefferson  devoted  himself  for  the  next 
six  years  to  building  up  and  consolidating  all 
the  forces  of  opposition.  Everywhere  he  was 
regarded  as  the  leader  of  the  radical  forces  in  the 
community.  A  philosopher  who  had  been  counted 
among  the  famous  men  of  France  during  his 
residence  there,  a  politician  who  resigned  the 
first  position  in  the  cabinet  because  he  was  too 
democratic  for  that  environment,  a  planter  and 
farmer  whose  house  was  admittedly  the  hand 
somest  in  America  and  whose  income  was  popu 
larly  estimated  at  many  thousands  a  year,  an 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  49 

inventor  of  new  plows,  a  writer  of  books  and 
most  of  all  the  author  of  the  great  Declaration  of 
Independence  which  was  coming  into  greater  pop 
ularity  in  the  South  every  year — such  was  the  man 
now  inspiring  the  Virginia  democracy  and  organ 
izing  the  courthouse  cliques  after  the  manner 
of  the  revolutionists  in  1776. 

There  was  an  opposition :  Washington  exerted 
himself  to  the  uttermost  in  1798  and  1799; 
Henry  was  Washington's  close  second  as  has 
been  noted;  John  Marshall  spent  six  thousand 
dollars  to  win  a  seat  in  Congress  in  1798;  the 
Bassetts  in  lower  Hanover  and  New  Kent  gave 
in  their  support  to  the  conservative  forces  which 
were  supposed  to  be  fighting  for  the  very  existence 
of  organized  society,  and  Henry  Lee,  the  father  of 
the  greatest  of  all  the  Lees,  went  about  sowing 
seeds  of  discord  in  the  hope  that  the  danger 
ous  democrat  might  be  defeated.  Smaller  men 
fought  in  smaller  ways  but  none  the  less  bitterly. 
Virginia  was  rent  asunder  as  never  before;  the 
hills  and  the  mountains,  the  people  of  the  great 
counties  of  the  back-country,  followed  the  stand 
ards  erected  by  their  neighbor  of  Monticello; 
4 


50    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

the  towns,  the  smaller  counties  of  the  East,  all 
the  appointees  of  the  federal  government,  the 
judges  of  the  federal  courts,  entered  the  canvass 
against  the  "mobocrat,"  the  innovator,  the  author 
of  the  law  which  had  taken  away  the  right  of  the 
older  sons  to  the  paternal  acres. 

IV 

Though  Jefferson  dreaded  conflict  and  shrank 
like  a  womanjrpm  publicity,  he  continued  to  lead ; 
he  worked  out  party  programs,  called  councils 
of  his  lieutenants  and  contributed  of  his  means 
to  the  party  chest.  Everywhere  and  at  all  times 
he  was  the  source  of  inspiration  to  those  who 
gathered  about  him  or  who  received  his  long  and 
thoughtful  letters.  Defeated  in  the  campaign  of 
1796  for  the  presidency  he  accepted  the  vice- 
presidency  with  the  utmost  willingness,  "having 
put  his  hands  to  the  plow."  And  while  he  presided 
over  a  senate,  two  thirds  of  whose  members  were 
his  political  or  personal  enemies,  he  never  once 
forgot  himself,  like  Calhoun  of  later  years,  or 
showed  signs  of  partisanship.  It  was  the  author 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  former 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  51 

foreign  minister  and  secretary  of  state  who  pre 
sided  over  the  Senate  which  actually  threatened 
to  impeach  him  for  giving  a  letter  of  introduction 
to  his  friend  Logan  who  was  going  to  France  on 
a  self-imposed  mission  of  peace  in  1798.  Yet 
he  was  the  soul  of  courtesy  to  Sedgwick  of  Mas 
sachusetts  and  Tracy  of  Connecticut,  his  most 
malignant  foes;  and  in  December,  1799,  when  all 
but  himself  had  lost  their  poise  and  dignity  in 
their  anger  or  joy  at  the  President  for  proposing 
the  famous  peace  commission  to  France,  he  could 
quietly  call  the  Senate  to  order.  Secure  in  the 
growing  affections  of  the  masses  of  people,  he 
could  view  the  rebuffs  which  were  meted  out  to 
him  in  Philadelphia  by  the  rabble  stirred  up  by 
his  opponents,  or  endure  with  the  utmost  equa 
nimity  the  nightly  shrieks  and  cat  calls  of  hostile 
serenaders  beneath  his  windows,  knowing  full 
well  that  his  day  was  dawning.  Few  men  have 
been  reviled  as  was  Jefferson  during  the  closing 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  Virginia  a 
pious  matron  of  a  noted  family  wished  that  he 
might  never  have  a  son  to  succeed  him,  and  in 
Massachusetts  men  prayed  daily  that  the  atheist, 


52  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

and  arch-enemy  of  all  good  men  and  noble  causes, 
might  be  brought  to  justice  for  his  scandalous 
blasphemy.  Never  faltering,  growing  more  sim 
ple  in  his  democratic  ways  as  he  grew  more 
famous,  he  kept  his  course — riding  about  his 
plantation  when  in  Virginia  or  meeting  his 
friends  Madison,  Albert  Gallatin  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  Nathaniel  Macon  of  North  Carolina,  at 
unostentatious  dinners  at  the  "Indian  Queen" 
when  at  the  seat  of  government.  So  far  did  he 
carry  his  leveling  principles  that  he  could  not  be 
induced  to  take  a  place  at  the  head  of  the  table 
where  his  devoted  followers  made  up  the  guests, 
but  always  chose,  like  the  man  in  the  Bible  story, 
the  least  prominent  station — even  after  his  election 
to  the  presidency. 

When  the  conflict  was  over,  when  both  Henry 
and  Washington  had  gone  to  their  graves  weep 
ing  for  their  country  because  it  followed  Jeffer 
son,  when  his  former  friend  Adams  turned  from 
him  as  from  a  leper,  having,  however,  placed  in 
the  chair  of  Chief  Justice  his  strongest  enemy 
in  Virginia,  John  Marshall,  he  had  the  great 
mass  of  the  southern  people  behind  him,  the 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  53 

/ 

majority  in  Pennsylvania,  New  York  and  Ver 
mont  and  a  strong  following  in  Connecticut 
aftd  Massachusetts.  He  had  drawn  a  line  from 
northeast  to  southwest,  from  the  town  of  Ports 
mouth  in  New  Hampshire  to  Augusta  in  Georgia, 
west  and  north  of  which  almost  every  man  was  his 
devoted  admirer  and  east  and  south  of  which  he 
had  many  friends  and  some  leaders  of  the  people. 
Jefferson  had  changed  the  first  sectional  line 
separating  North  from  South  to  one  separating 
the  older  from  the  newer  sections  of  all  the  states 
and  by  his  policy  and  his  devotion  to  popular 
rights  this  was  soon  to  disappear,  leaving  only 
isolated  groups  of  opponents  like  the  Essex  neigh 
borhood  in  Massachusetts  or  the  old  river  counties 
of  the  Carolinas. 

What  this  apostle  of  democracy  had  stood  for 
in  Virginia,  the  dogma  that  all  men  are  free  and 
equal,  equality  before  the  law,  popular  suffrage, 
equal  representation  of  equal  units  of  population 
in  all  legislatures,  abolition  of  negro  slavery  and 
the  establishment  of  religious  freedom — the  creed 
of  the  up-country  of  the  South  before  1820 — was 
now  the  national  program  and  Virginia  became 


54    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

the  basis  and  the  background  for  the  federal 
administration  in  the  same  way  that  the  up-coun 
try  counties  in  Virginia  had  been  the  basis  and 
support  of  the  Revolution  in  1776.  Jefferson 
had  captured  Henry's  party  in  Virginia,  reju 
venated  it,  found  allies  for  it  in  the  Carolina 
up-country,  and  then  made  it  national.  And  it 
was  this  growing  section  of  the  South,  the  popu 
lous  border  region,  now  spread  into  Tennessee 
and  Kentucky  and  Ohio,  Presbyterians,  Baptists 
and  Methodists,  considered  in  denominational 
terminology,  that  contributed  the  ideals  which 
made  Jefferson's  first  four  years  in  office  unparal 
leled  in  American  history  and  which  caused  his 
policy  to  prevail  even  in  New  England.  This 
it  seems  to  the  writer  is  the  key  to  the  under 
standing  of  the  remarkable  popularity  of  the  third 
president,  notwithstanding  the  almost  complete 
breakdown  of  his  second  term  in  office. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  Jefferson  was  not  at 
one  with  any  great  group  of  his  followers :  he 
hated  war,  yet  the  up-country  people  were  the 
most  warlike  in  the  nation;  he  was  liberal  in 
religious  matters  while  the  Scotch-Irish,  Baptist 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  55 

and  Methodist  masses  who  made  up  his  party 
were  devoted  to  Calvinistic  theology  or  to  posi 
tive  acception  of  the  miraculous  view  of  the  New 
Testament;  he  was  in  all  his  tastes  and  activities 
a  gentleman  and  a  scholar,  they  were  the  cruder, 
the  more  illiterate  great  element  of  the  American 
nationality.  What  kept  them  together?  What 
stirred  their  enthusiasm  for  the  greatest  scholar 
and  thinker  who  has  yet  occupied  the  presidential 
chair  ? 

Jefferson  had  a  boundless  faith  in  the  masses. 
He  still  adhered  to  his  doctrine  that  most  farmers 
are  honest  while  most  other  people  are  dishonest. 
God  was  to  him  especially  intimate  with  the 
farmers — "their  breasts  were  still  the  Almighty's 
chosen  repository  of  truth."  Jefferson  thought 
all  men  ought  to  have  the  ballot — that  was  his 
remedy  for  the  ills  of  his  time,  though  he  hastened 
to  add  that  all  men  should  be  educated  at  public 
expense.  Jefferson  hated  England  and  the  back- 
country  people  had  no  less  antipathy  for  the 
nation  which  Patrick  Henry  had  held  up  to  them 
and  their  fathers  as  the  cause  of  all  America's 
woes,  as  the  insidious  foe  who  still  stirred  up  the 


56     STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Indians  to  deeds  of  rapine  and  bloodshed.  So 
if  Jefferson  did  not  share  the  religious  zeal  and 
dogmatism  of  the  people  who  supported  him,  if 
he  viewed  Jesus,  the  Christ,  as  a  plain  but  very 
great  teacher  and  philosopher,  he  had  faith  in  his 
followers;  he  liked  their  democratic  church  and 
ideas  of  government  and  their  simple  every-day 
honesty.  Their  methods  he  undertook  to  apply  to 
the  federal  system.  Was  it  not  he  who  said: 
All  men  are  created  free  and  equal?  That  was 
their  creed  in  politics  as  well  as  in  church 
affairs.  .Whether  Jefferson  believed  this  glitter 
ing  doctrine  or  not,  he  hated  all  men  who  under 
took  to  establish  the  contrary  principle.  All  such 
sought,  in  his  opinion,  some  undue  advantage  in 
society,  some  undue  attention  and  that  was  con 
trary  to  the  democracy  which  he  hoped  to  see 
prevail  in  America.  Thus  one  sees  easily  how 
f  sectarians,  religious  zealots,  political  doctrinaires 
I  and  all  men  who  believed  in  essential  human 
freedom,  broken,  though  they  were,  into  hostile 
groups,  found  in  Jefferson  their  common  point  of 
union.  And  the  alliance  which  resulted  was  a 
party  of  practical  idealists  in  this  country,  never 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  57 

likely  to  reappear — a  party  of  peasant  farmers  led 
by  a  great  peasant  planter  in  a  nation  ninety-five 
per  cent  of  whom  were  peasant  farmers.  No 
wonder  the  Jefferson  party  stood  intact  for  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

Now  when  this  ideal  back-country  man  became 
president  he  continued  the  same  democratic  man 
ner  of  life  which  had  prevailed  in  Albemarle 
county  and  all  the  other  counties  in  the  nation. 
The  people  rejoiced  to  hear  that  "levees  had  been 
done  away/'  that  the  President  admitted  all  who 
came  to  see  him  on  equal  terms ;  they  were  glad  to 
know  there  were  no  more  state  carriages  with  out 
riders  and  footmen  and  that  the  President  rode 
about  the  little  backwoods  capital  on  the  Potomac 
in  quite  as  simple  a  manner  as  any  farmer  who 
carried  a  bag  of  corn  to  mill. 

When  Jefferson  was  president  he  had  for  his 
cabinet  members  his  friend  and  neighbor  Madi 
son — a  farmer  like  himself — another  personal 
friend  Albert  Gallatin,  an  able  leader  of  the  back 
woods  people  of  Pennsylvania,  who  proved  in  a 
practical  way  quite  as  good  a  Secretary  of  Treas 
ury  as  Hamilton  himself  had  been.  Nathaniel 


58  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Macon,  a  typical  southern  farmer,  who  lived 
miles  away  from  any  public  highway,  and  whose 
theory  in  life  was,  that,  when  his  neighbors  came 
near  enough  for  him  to  hear  their  dogs  bark, 
he  would  go  further  west,  received  Jefferson's 
support  and  was  elected  Speaker  of  the  House. 
The  only  great  aristocrat  in  the  party,  Charles 
Pinckney,  with  an  annual  income  of  half  a  hun 
dred  thousand,  was  appropriately  made  a  foreign 

minister.     The  ideas  of  the  small  farmers,  not 

•'""••••»«.*. •'' 
those  of  the  great  planters  or  merchant  princes, 

dominated  the  whole  administration  and  strangely 
enough  the  "large  affairs"  of  the  country  seem 
not  to  have  suffered.  There  was  no  proscrip 
tion  of  the  rival  party.  Federalists  held  all  the 
offices  and  Federalists  made  no  secret  of  their 
hatred  for  the  President.  They  thought  them 
selves  the  repository  of  ability  and  learning  and 
respectability;  and  all  their  papers  and  organs 
daily  published  diatribes  against  the  "fools 
and  knaves"  who  had  come  to  power.  But  Jef 
ferson  was  a  patient  man.  He  did  not  remove 
a  baker's  dozen  of  his  opponents.  Death  and 
resignation  came  only  slowly  to  his  assistance, 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  59 

and   some   of  his   followers   were  office-hungry. 

Washington  had  set  the  example  of  appointing 
only  Federalists  to  office.  Every  member  of  the 
federal  courts  was  both  a  Federalist  and  a  per 
sonal  friend  of  the  first  president;  the  district 
judges,  attorneys  and  marshals  were  partisans, 
some  of  them  of  the  most  virulent  character. 
And  after  retiring  from  the  presidency,  Wash 
ington  insisted  that  members  of  the  other  party 
should  not  be  appointed  even  to  the  positions 
in  the  army  which  he  was  organizing  to  fight 
France  in  1798.  Adams  had  not  departed  from 
this  rule.  But  Jefferson  said  we  are  all  Repub 
licans,  all  Federalists,  and  his  purpose  was  to 
unite  all  moderate  men  upon  the  single  and  simple 
principle  of  democracy.  And  he  was  almost 
successful. 

The  two  great  measures  of  Jefferson's  eight 
years  in  office  were  the  purchase  of  Louisiana 
and  the  Embargo.  Many  people  were  surprised 
that  the  peacemaker  and  idealist  should  have 
threatened  war  with  France,  for  whom  he  was 
supposed  peculiarly  to  stand  in  national  politics, 
if  he  were  not  given  control  of  the  mouth  of  the 


60     STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

f  Mississippi.     But  any  one  who  studied  carefully 

J.  the  make-up  of  the  Jefferson  party  must  have 

ffc^' 

seen  that  it  was  the  free  navigation  of  the  Missis 
sippi  which  the  great  body  of  his  followers 
demanded.  Three  great  states,  Kentucky,  Ten 
nessee  and  Ohio  had  been  built  up  by  these  very 
followers  and  the  one  condition  of  their  economic 
existence  was  the  free  navigation  of  the  great 
river.  The  interior  counties  of  all  the  states  from 
New  York  to  Georgia  were  all  favorable  to  the 
demands  of  the  people  on  the  "western  waters." 
Only  the  commercial  interests  of  the  East  were 
indifferent  to  the  matter.  Hence  it  was  a  foregone 
conclusion  that  Jefferson,  the  "pacifist,"  should 
take  the  stand  he  did  in  1802  and  write  to  the 
American  minister  in  Paris,  that  "from  the  day 
France  takes  possession  of  New  Orleans  she  makes 
us  an  enemy,  and  we  must  marry  ourselves  to  the 
British  fleet  and  nation."  No  politician  counts 
consistency  as  "worth  a  straw"  when  the  interests 
of  his  party  and  constituents  are  thrown  into  the 
balance.  Jefferson,  the  arch-enemy  of  England, 
was  now  her  friend  if  by  such  a  summersault 
he  could  win  for  his  western  friends  the  coveted 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  61 

prize.  The  Constitution  thus  became,  even  in 
Jefferson's  hands,  a  very  elastic  document — 
"nothing  of  moment  among  friends."  The  man 
who  had  moved  heaven  and  earth  because  Wash 
ington  and  Adams  stretched  the  sacred  document 
of  1787  now  tore  it  to  pieces  and  all  his  friends  of 
a  former  day  applauded.  Only  Adams  rubbed  his 
eyes.  The  most  popular  act  of  Jefferson's  presi-v 
dency  was  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  which  was/ 
accomplished  a  year  after  he  opened  the  question 
with  France — it  made  certain  the  allegiance  of 
the  West  and  the  supremacy  of  the  new  party. 
The  next  and  only  great  item  of  Jefferson's 
policy  I  mean  to  discuss  here  is  the  famous 
Embargo  of  1807.  The  warring  powers  of 
Europe  had  decided  that  there  should  be  no  neu 
trals  in  the  struggle,  that  America,  fast  becoming 
the  mistress  of  the  carrying  trade  of  the  world, 
because  of  her  neutrality,  must  take  sides.  Jef-  ^ 
ferson  desired  to  sell  freely  to  all  parties,  "to  make 
hay  while  the  sun  shines."  But  when  England 
and  France  pressed  hard  upon  American  com 
merce,  trying  to  compel  him  to  take  sides,  his 
answer  was,  "stop  all  trade  with  both  parties" 


62  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

and  starve  them  into  a  recognition  of  the  demands 
of  the  United  States.  And  to  make  sure  of  his 
policy  he  forbade  all  American  shipping  to  leave 
port.  Millions  of  dollars  worth  of  goods  in  ships 
worth  other  millions  rotted  in  our  harbors,  out  of 
reach  of  hostile  hands.  This  was  firing  the  barn 
to  get  rid  of  the  rats.  Never  did  a  president  at 
tempt  to  enforce  a  more  unpopular  act.  Virginia 
lost  enormously,  Jefferson  himself  sacrificing  half 
his  annual  income;  but  if  Virginia  lost  half 
her  annual  crop  values  New  England  lost  three 
Fourths.  The  President  was  attacked  in  the 
eastern  papers  more  savagely  than  John  Adams 
had  ever  been  in  the  southern;  political  speakers 
held  him  up  as  a  monster  devouring  the  substance 
of  the  land;  ministers  shouted  denunciation  from 
a  thousand  pulpits ;  and  aspiring  poets  won  laurels 
by  lampooning  the  President.  But  the  President 
was  a  resolute  man  notwithstanding  his  sensitive 
ness  to  public  criticism.  He  was  an  idealist  and 
he  was  right  in  the  assumption  that  a  year  or  two 
of  absolute  non-intercourse  with  Europe  would 
f  bring  the  desired  results,  recognition  of  the  right 
to  a  neutral  commerce  with  all  the  warring  powers 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  63 

of  the  world ;  but  he  was  wrong  in  the  premise  that 
men  in  general,  especially  American  merchants 
and  seamen  who  had  been  accustomed  for  a  hun 
dred  years  to  violate  with  impunity  all  the  laws 
they  did  not  like,  would  submit  to  the  necessary 
restrictions  upon  their  actions.  Jefferson  was 
philosopher  enough  to  see  that  if  he  lost  one  crop 
of  tobacco  he  would  get  a  market  for  all  his  future 
crops  and  he  was  willing  to  wait ;  the  majority  of 
planters  in  Virginia,  being  now  in  the  ascendency 
in  national  and  state  affairs,  were  induced  to  sup-  . 
port  their  leader,  though  with  many  a  grimace. 
But. New  England  was  the  commercial  center — 
there  Jefferson  was  regarded  as  an  enemy,  there 
men  had  for  three  generations  "gone  down  to  the 
sea  in  ships"  whether  the  law  favored  or  forbade. 
They  felt  no  great  love  for  law  anyway ;  certainly 
none  for  a  law  which  originated  in  Virginia. 
They  simply  defied  the  President;  and  Napoleon 
wittily  remarked  when  He  seized  many  valuable 
cargoes  of  New  England  goods  that  he  was  only 
helping  the  American  government  enforce  the 
law. 

When  the  Embargo  broke  down  and  the  popu- 


64  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

larity  which  so  warmed  the  cockles  of  Jefferson's 
heart  was  gone  he,  like  a  woman  unconvinced, 
"stood  pat."  Nothing  could  move  him  and  he 
went  out  of  office  in  March,  1809,  amidst  the  hoots 
and  cries  of  derision  not  unlike  those  to  which 
his  ears  had  been  accustomed  when  Adams  was 
president  and  he  presided  over  the  Senate. 
Nevertheless,  he,  unlike  Adams,  had  put  his  friend 
in  the  place  he  vacated  willingly  and  Madison 
could  placate  the  angry  commercialists.  It  was 
not  a  triumphal  procession,  his  return  to  Monti- 
cello;  but  when  he  arrived  at  Charlottesville  his 
faithful  mountain  neighbors  had  assembled  to 
greet  him  and  tell  him  how  much  they  admired 
him  and  how  glad  they  were  to  be  honored  with 
his  friendship.  This  was  soothing;  but  it  could 
hardly  obliterate  from  his  mind  the  thought  that 
he  had  retired  a  second  time  from  executive 
office  with  the  sharpest  criticism  of  great  masses 
of  people  upon  his  administration.  In  1781  it  had 
been  Henry  and  these  very  up-country  people  who 
hounded  him;  now  it  was  New  England  and  the 
northern  interests.  Anyway  he  was  at  Monti- 
cello,  his  party  was  still  in  power  and  Virginia 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  65 

sat  at  the  head  of  the  council  board  of  the  nation ; 
his  work  had  not  been  in  vain,  and  there  was  never 
a  more  buoyant  and  elastic  spirit  than  that  which 
animated  Thomas  Jefferson  and  carried  him 
through  so  many  crises.  He  took  up  his  daily 
round  of  study,  of  riding  over  his  great  planta 
tion  and  conversing  with  the  friends  who  came 
in  such  numbers  that  his  large  house  was  hardly 
large  enough  to  contain  them.  Henceforth  he 
was  the  "Sage  of  Monticello." 


Only  one  other  American  has  enjoyed  the  real 
distinction  of  being  a  national  "sage"  and  that 
one  was  Andrew  Jackson,  not  one  of  the  three 
great  southern  men  who,  more  than  all  others, 
had  in  their  hands  the  making  of  the  South  which 
fought  for  independence  in  1861.  Jefferson  con 
tributed  the  idealistic  democracy  which  grew  to 
conservatism  under  Calhoun,  who  always  insisted 
that  he  was  a  follower  of  the  first  Republican 
president  but  who  nevertheless  made  slavery  the 
basis  of  his  system,  "the  stone  rejected  of  the 
builders"  thus  becoming  head  of  the  corner, 
5 


66    STATESMEIST  OF  .THE  OLD  SOUTH 

while  Jefferson  Davis,  advancing  yet  a  step 
further,  set  the  world  in.  arms  on  behalf  of  slav 
ery — the  property-rhterests,  the  "privileged  inter 
ests"  of  the  time.  It  was  a  long  and  a  deflected 
road  from  Jefferson  to  Jefferson  Davis;  but  the 
South  traveled  it  and  thought  it  the  king's  high 
way,  just  as  the  great  Republican  party  has  trav 
eled  from  Lincoln  to  McKinley,  thinking  the  way 
perfectly  plain  and  easy — a  development  almost 
identical  with  that  of  the  Democrats  from  Jackson 
to  Buchanan,  from  liberty  and  equality  to  priv 
ilege  and  property.  But  let  us  see  how  the 
progress  began.  Madison  was  left  in  Wash 
ington  to  relieve  and  modify  Jefferson's  work, 
to  please  New  England  if  he  could.  He  gave 
up  the  Embargo,  but  could  not  bring  England  or 
France  to  any  reasonable  agreement;  and  within 
a  short  two  years  he  was  at  the  threshold  of 
war.  There  was  no  help  for  it  and  the  great 
mass  of  Jefferson's  followers  joined  in  the  clamor 
for  the  conflict — a  conflict  which  the  South 
proposed  to  wage  on  behalf  of  New  England 
and  New  England's  rights !  Jefferson  thought 
if  war  came  the  Americans  would  capture  Canada, 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  67 

Florida  and  Cuba,  indeed  those  were  to  be  the 
limits  of  the  empire  of  freedom.  Yet  he  wrote 
an  English  friend  that  if  our  countries  are  at 
war  we  need  not  be,  and  that  it  was  to  the  interest 
of  both  England  and  the  United  States  to  be  the 
closest  of  friends.  Once  again  the  up-country 
people  of  the  South,  the  backwoods  men  this  time 
of  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  volunteered  in  good 
numbers  and  won  whatever  of  land  victories  there 
were.  The  low-country  Republicans  like  John 
Taylor  of  Virginia  and  Macon  of  North  Carolina 
blocked  the  way  to  war,  crying  out  that  republi 
canism  would  go  to  the  wall  in  the  military 
scramble.  Jefferson  lost  as  much  by  the  war  as 
he  had  lost  by  the  Embargo;  democracy  was  ex 
pensive  to  him. 

But  a  more  interesting  phase  of  Jefferson's 
life  during  the  seventeen  years  of  retirement  at 
Monticello  was  his  steady  loyalty  to  the  idealism 
of  his  younger  years.  His  hostility  to  the  Vir 
ginia  constitution — one  of  the  most  unjust  in 
the  country — was  creditable  to  him.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  the  privileged  interests  of  Vir 
ginia  had  defeated  him  in  1776  when  they  threw 


68    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

out  his  constitutional  program;  they  succeeded 
in  distributing  the  representation  of  the  two  great 
sections  in  such  a  way  as  to  secure  for  the  next 
half  century  an  overwhelming  majority  for  the 
small  eastern  counties  over  the  great  and  popu 
lous  counties  of  the  West.  Reaction  followed  this 
victory  of  the  slaveholding  part  of  the  state  and 
instead  of  a  progressive  and  expanding  democracy 
we  find  Virginia  becoming  more  and  more  a 
government  of  a  privileged  class.  Public  schools 
were  wanted  in  the  West  but  the  eastern  men 
opposed  all  such  except  as  they  might  be  supported 
locally ;  the  West  asked  for  highways  which  would 
give  them  markets,  but  the  East  forbade  them; 
the  West  believed  in  universal  suffrage,  the  East 
formed  a  restricted  electorate;  and  the  West  op 
posed  a  system  of  representation  which  secured  to 
property  the  control  of  local  law-making  and  of 
the  federal  policy  of  the  state  as  well,  while  the 
majority  of  the  people,  mainly  farmers,  remained 
helpless. 

In  1783  and  again  in  1794  when  Jefferson  had 
urged  upon  Virginia  a  revisal  of  her  fundamental 
law  which  would  have  done  away  with  these 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  69 

inequalities  and  broken  down  the  power  of  the 
oligarchy  which  dominated  the  state,  much  to  its 
own  hurt  and  the  injury  of  the  nation  at  large, 
Henry  had  always  been  the  chief  obstacle  in  the 
way  of  this  reform,  strange  as  it  may  seem ;  the 
reason  of  this  opposition  was  not  simply  Henry's 
hatred  of  Jefferson,  but  an  inveterate  hostility 
on  the  part  of  most  of  the  counties  south  of  the 
James  where  Henry  lived.  However,  in  1816 
the  old  reformer  takes  up  the  matter  near  his 
heart  in  his  accustomed  way,  by  urging  upon 
some  one  else  the  leadership  of  the  fight  which 
he  will  support  with  all  his  influence. 

Between  1776  and  1816  one  of  those  gradual 
changes,  so  common  in  the  history  of  political 
parties,  had  been  accomplished.  Jefferson's  fol 
lowers  had  in  the  earlier  years  of  this  period 
favored  equal  representation  of  all  classes  of 
people  in  the  legislature ;  he  and  they  had  favored 
above  all  else  the  overthrow  of  slavery,  and  the 
party  was  numerous,  if  not  sufficiently  power 
ful  to  overcome  the  opposition  or  the  inertia  of 
the  East.  In  1800  when  the  great  leveling  cam 
paign  had  been  fought  in  national  politics  Vir- 


70     STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 
-e 

ginia  was  overwhelmingly  Jeffersonian,  but  less 

radical  than  in  1776  when  the  fires  of  liberalism 
and  patriotism  were  burning  briskly.  After  1800 
the  county  leaders  of  the  party  in  Virginia  and  in 
the  South  as  well  steadily  and  regularly  taught 
their  property-holding  followers  that  Jefferson 
was  not  so  radical  as  had  been  thought.  Was 
he  not  a  slaveholder?  Was  he  not  the  master 
of  the  finest  estate  in  Virginia?  How  could  he 
believe  in  the  doctrine  that  all  men  are  equal; 
certainly  he  was  no  longer  hostile  to  slavery. 
Federalists  were  told  again  and  again  during  the 
Jefferson  and  Madison  administrations  that  their 
property  (negroes)  would  not  be  attacked  by  the 
leaders  of  the  Republican  party.  There  are  fre 
quent  promises  of  this  sort  in  the  addresses  of 
local  meetings  in  Virginia.  And  Madison  was 
openly  proclaimed  the  conservative.  Men  who 
had  hated  Jefferson  voted  for  Madison  as  a  con 
servative  and  former  Federalist.  Chief  Justice 
Marshall,  the  strongest  defender  of  slavery,  was 
greatly  tempted  to  vote  for  Madison,  though 
he  managed  to  hold  his  ground  and  not  cast  a 
vote  in  a  national  election  from  1800,  when  John 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  71 

Adams  had  his  support,  till  1824  when  John 
Quincy  Adams  was  a  candidate.  The  Republic 
anism  of  Madison  was  highly  respectable  in 
Virginia;  many  old  eastern  families  supported  it 
and  easily  defended  their  attitude.  But  real  Jef- 
fersonians  like  John  Taylor  who  believed  in 
reform,  like  Nathaniel  Macon,  a  pioneer  in  char 
acter,  were  disposed  to  eschew  the  little  man  in 
the  White  House. 

During  the  years  of  change  the  county  courts 
which  had  been  suppressed  in  Virginia  in  1770 
came  once  again  to  dominate  Virginia  life — but 
the  county  courts  were  Jeffersonian,  that  is, 
the  county  judges  belonged  to  the  Republican 
party  and  they  governed  Virginia  in  a  patriarchal 
way  as  all  Virginians  love  to  be  governed.  Jef 
ferson  said  of  them:  "The  justices  of  the  in 
ferior  courts  are  self-chosen,  for  life,  and  per 
petuate  their  own  body  in  succession  forever,  so 
that  a  faction  once  possessing  themselves  of  the 
bench  of  a  county  can  never  be  broken  up,  but 
hold  their  county  in  chains,  forever  indissoluble. 
Yet  these  justices  are  the  real  executive  as  well 
as  judiciary,  in  all  minor  and  most  ordinary  con- 


72     STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

cerns.  They  tax  us  at  will;  fill  the  office  of 
sheriff,  the  most  important  of  all  the  executive 
officers  of  the  county ;  name  nearly  all  our  military 
leaders,  which  leaders,  once  named,  are  remov 
able  but  by  themselves.  The  juries,  our  judges 
of  all  fact,  and  of  law  when  they  choose  it,  are 
not  selected  by  the  people,  nor  amenable  to  them. 
Where  then  is  our  republicanism  (democracy) 
to  be  found  ?  .  .  .  The  true  foundation  of  repub 
lican  government  is  the  equal  right  of  every 
citizen,  in  his  person  and  property,  and  in  their 
management/'1 

What  Jefferson  here  says  was  meant  to  apply 
to  Virginia  in  1816;  but  it  applied  any  time  be 
tween  1800  and  1850.  The  county  courts  prad- 
tically  chose  the  candidates,  for  the  legislature; 
these,  whether  Whig  or  Democratic  made  little 
difference,  when  elected,  selected  the  governor  and 
the  judges  of  the  higher  courts,  chose  United 
States  senators  and  created  districts  and  counties 
— units  of  representation — when  they  thought  it 
wise  to  do  so.  A  majority  of  the  courts  were 
located  in  the  East  in  1816  as  in  1800,  in  1850 

1  Works  of  Thomas  Jefferson  (Ford's  Fed.  Ed.)  XII,  5-7. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  73 

as  in  1820,  for  the  legislature  took  good  care 
that  the  western  counties,  no  matter  how  popu 
lous  that  section,  should  never  come  to  power. 
This  condition  of  things  Jefferson,  the  old  man  of 
1816,  declared  to  be  iniquitous;  he  had  said  the 
same  when  he  was  a  young  visionary  writing 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  His  remedy 
was:  "Reduce  your  legislature  to  a  convenient 
number  for  full  but  orderly  discussion.  Let 
every  man  who  rights  or  pays  excise  have  his 
just  and  equal  right  in  their  selection.  Submit 
them  to  approbation  or  rejection  (the  recall  ?)  at 
short  intervals.  Let  the  executive  be  chosen  in 
the  same  way,  and  for  the  same  term,  by  those 
whose  agent  he  is  to  be ;  .  .  .  divide  the  counties 
into  wards  of  such  size  as  that  every  citizen  can 
attend,  when  called  on,  and  act  in  person. 
Ascribe  to  them  the  government  of  their  wards 
in  all  things  relating  to  themselves  exclusively. 
A  justice,  chosen  by  themselves,  in  each,  a  con 
stable,  a  military  company,  a  patrol,  a  school, 
the  care  of  their  poor.  .  .  .  These  wards,  called 
townships  in  New  England,  are  the  vital  principle 
of  their  governments,  and  have  proved  them- 


74     STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

selves  the  wisest  invention  ever  devised  by  the 
wit  of  man  for  the  perfect  exercise  of  self-govern 
ment,  and  for  its  preservation."  He  concludes  this 
remarkable  letter1  by  urging  universal  suffrage, 
equal  representation,  popular  election  of  govern 
ors  and  judges  and  periodical  amendments  to  the 
constitution. 

When  one  remembers  what  such  a  program 
would  have  meant  for  Virginia  in  1816  one's 
surprise  increases  that  an  old  man,  the  owner  of 
a  hundred  slaves  and  the  master  of  thousands 
of  acres  of  land — an  ex-president  of  the  nation — 
could  have  urged  it.  Simple  democracy  not 
republicanism,  is  what  he  advocated;  and  democ-A 

racy  would  have  been  as  hostile  to  slavery  as  it 

•  I    -._.,  _         ....... 

'was  to  the  unfair  system  of  representation  sus 
tained  by  the  constitution  of  Virginia. 

This  letter  had  hardly  reached  the  hands  of  the 
up-country  men  before  it  was  being  copied  and 
circulated  preparatory  to  their  coming  demon 
stration,  August,  1816,  against  the  old  order  and 
the  eastern  oligarchy.  It  was  not  long  before 
its  contents  reached  the  ears  of  eastern  leaders 
*To  Samuel  Kercheval,  the  up-country  historian. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  75 

like  Giles  and  Littleton  W.  Tazewell;  and  a 
commotion  was  raised  about  the  ears  of  the  "Man 
of  the  Mountain"  which  greatly  pleased  Chief 
Justice  Marshall  who  always  manifested  delight 
when  his  life-long  enemy  found  himself  sharply 
criticized.  True  to  his  nature  Jefferson  wrote 
a  second  and  a  third  letter  beseeching  Kercheval, 
after  the  manner  of  a  girl  in  her  teens,  never  more 
to  show  his  letter  nor  to  allow  copies.  He  was 
an  old  man  who  loved  his  ease;  he  was  willing 
to  be  governed  by  the  little  oligarchies,  the  county 
courts,  or  the  one-sided  legislature,  during  the 
remnant  of  years  that  remained  to  him.  It  is  al 
most  pitiful  to  note  the  sensitiveness  of  this  able 
statesman  but  thorough-going  democrat.  He  had  ./ 
given  out  a  bit  of  his  daily  thought  to  his  beloved 
Virginia  and  Virginia  was  suddenly  divided  into 
two  camps  as  in  the  days  when  he  and  Patrick 
Henry  were  leading  the  great  revolt.  He  had 
proposed  what  would  have  revolutionized  Vir 
ginia  and  made  civil  war  unnecessary  in  the 
nation;  but  the  dominant  section  of  the  Old 
Dominion  was  not  the  open-minded  community 
he  thought  it  ought  to  be.  The  people  of  the 


76  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH' 

East  were  no  longer  levelers,  revolutionists,  demo 
crats,  even  if  they  had  ever  been  such.  The 
Federalists  had  metamorphosed  the  party  which 
Jefferson  had  founded.  Chief  Justice  Marshall 
more  nearly  represented  that  party  than  did  Jef 
ferson  himself.  He  stood  for  property;  Jefferson 
for  human  rights  as  of  old — and  there  could  be 
no  harmony  between  such  men. 

The  up-country  democrats  had  their  meeting: 
they  read  Jefferson's  advice,  and  demanded  a 
new  constitutional  convention.  But  no  eastern 
county  joined  them  and  few  of  the  great  black 
counties  sent  delegates.  A  line  drawn  from 
Washington  City  to  Danville,  Virginia,  would 
have  been  a  sort  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  on 
either  side  of  which  dwelt  hostile  camps.  The 
legislature,  still  dominated  by  the  slavery  coun 
ties,  which  heard  the  next  winter,  1816-17,  the  cry 
of  the  populous  and  growing  West,  "stood  pat", 
to  use  a  modern  term,  and  paid  no  more  heed 
to  Jefferson's  advice  than  had  the  party  of  reaction 
in  the  days  when  Jefferson  sent  to  Williamsburg 
his  constitution,  yet  almost  every  member  of  that 
body  professed  to  be  ardent  followers  of  the 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  77 

"Sage  of  Monticello" — all  were  Republicans! 
Not  until  after  Jefferson's  death  was  there  a 
serious  effort  to  give  Virginia  a  just  constitution. 

VI 

Had  Jefferson  and  his  friends  been  successful   / 
in  1816  in  their  reform  movement  slavery  would  ; 
have   disappeared   in   Virginia   by    state   action.  - 
The  up-country  was  then  and  remained  until  1850 
hostile    to    the    "institution"    and    a    legislature 

X 

which   they    dominated    would    almost   certainly     V 
have  brought  about  its  gradual  overthrow.     In 
fact  this  was  the  chief  source  of  opposition  on  the 
part  of  the  West  to  the  constitution.     Jefferson 
himself  was  actuated  by  this  motive. 

But  Virginia  was  becoming  wedded  to  slavery 
and  the  form  of  society  which  it  produced  during 
the  first  and  second  decades  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  slavery  had  fastened  itself  firmly  N 
upon  the  vitals  of  the  middle  counties  which 
had  not  been  the  case  in  1776.  The  East  had 
moved  westward  by  two  tiers  of  counties  since 
Jefferson  first  laid  his  axe  at  the  root  of  the  nox 
ious  tree  of  privilege.  Besides  Virginia  enjoyed 


78  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

an  increased  representation  in  congress  by  reason 
of  slavery  and  this  had  come  to  be  appreciated 
as  fully  as  it  had  been  by  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia  when  they  made  it  a  condition  to  their 
entering  the  union  in  1787-88.  Virginia  had 
then  been  indifferent  to  this  compromise  of  the 
constitution;  but  now  her  leaders  had  come  to 
agree  with  the  lower  South  on  this  point.  Again 
Virginia  slave-owners  were  migrating  to  Alabama 
and  Mississippi  in  great  numbers  and  founding 
there  new  pro-slavery  commonwealths;  many 
others  bought  plantations  in  the  new  cotton  coun 
try  and  stocked  them  with  slaves  but  continued  to 
live  in  the  Old  Dominion,  all  of  which  tended  to 
fasten  slavery  upon  the  old  commonwealth.  Be 
sides  the  inter-state  slave  trade  had  grown  to  be  a 
good  business.  The  Chief  Justice  of  Virginia  had 
been  willing  in  1815  to  buy  a  "likely  negro"  for 
sale  to  the  southward  and  William  B.  Giles  had 
come  to  reckon  the  export  slave  trade  as  one  of 
'  the  great  economic  resources  of  Virginia.  Before 
1832  the  majority  of  the  public  men  of  Virginia 
acknowledged  the  force  of  this  economic  argu 
ment  and  definitely  accepted  slavery  as  a  blessing 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  79 

not  to  be  interfered  with  from  within  or  without. 
Still  Jefferson  did  not  yield.  Not  a  year  passed 
without  a  lament  from  him  that  his  work  of  1776 
had  been  "nipped  in  the  bud."  In  1814  he 
wrote:1  "Yet  the  hour  of  emancipation  is  advan 
cing,  in  the  march  of  time.  It  will  come;  and 
whether  brought  on  by  the  generous  energy  of 
our  own  minds;  or  by  the  bloody  process  of 
St.  Domingo,  excited  and  conducted  by  the 
power  of  our  present  enemy  [Great  Britain],  if 
once  stationed  permanently  within  our  country, 
and  offering  asylum  &  arms  to  the  oppressed, 
is  a  leaf  of  our  history  not  yet  turned  over." 
The  next  year :  "That  it  [emancipation  of  the 
slaves]  may  finally  be  effected,  and  its  progress 
hastened,  will  be  the  last  and  fondest  prayer  of 
him  who  now  salutes  you."  And  to  Fanny 
Wright  he  said  that  the  usual  arguments  in 
defense  of  slavery  had  no  basis  in  fact,  that  the 
negro  would  prove  equal  to  his  own  preservation 
if  set  free.  George  McDuffie  of  South  Carolina 
advanced  the  doctrine  in  1825  that  slavery  was 

1  Works  of  Thomas  Jefferson  (Ford's  Fed.  Ed.)  XI,  417; 
ibid  471. 


8o    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

right  and  that  one  man  could  rightfully  possess 
himself  of  the  faculties  of  another  without  his 
consent.  To  this  Jefferson  replied  in  one  of  the 
last  letters  he  ever  wrote  that  he  sharply  dis 
sented,  that  he  retained  his  early  principles  on 
the  subject;  but  that  he  was  opposed  to  inter 
ference  with  slavery  by  the  federal  government.1 

These  were  the  ideas  of  the  retired  statesman. 
He  never  yielded  his  hostility  to  "the  institu 
tion"  ;  he  was  always  solicitous  lest  some  catas 
trophe  come  upon  the  South  because  of  it,  and 
he  inspired  his  grandson,  Thomas  Jefferson  Ran 
dolph,  with  the  great  plan  of  emancipation  which 
was  presented  to  the  Virginia  legislature  in  1831, 
five  years  after  his  death.  Under  the  stimulus 
of  the  Nat  Turner  insurrection  the  Virginia 
assembly  discussed  this  scheme  for  months,  and 
at  one  time  it  seemed  that  the  great  work,  gradual 
emancipation,  would  be  inaugurated.  By  a  single 
vote  the  grand  committee,  appointed  to  devise 
a  plan,  returned  an  adverse  report.  The  leaders 
of  the  southern  counties,  where  slavery  was  deeply 
rooted,  won  the  day  and  lived  to  urge  secession 

1  Works  of  Thomas  Jefferson  (Ford's  Fed.  Ed.)  XII,  469. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  81 

in  1 86 1  as  a  further  means  of  perpetuating  their 
power  and  preserving  their  favorite  property. 

Jefferson's  influence  had  thus  been  strong 
enough  to  bring  his  great  old  state  to  the  very 
threshold  of  the  wisest  movement  ever  inaugu 
rated  there.  Still  it  failed.  Upper  and  western 
Virginia  had  failed  again ;  and  property  interests, 
then  as  usual,  maintained  the  upper  hand  as 
against  human  and  personal  rights.  A  new 
prophet  now  came  forth;  Thomas  R.  Dew, 
the  President  of  William  and  Mary  College, 
spoke  for  Virginia  when  he  ridiculed  the  Dec 
laration  of  Independence1  and  proceeded  to  prove 
that  all  men  are  not  equal.  From  1832  to  1861 
Jefferson's  name  was  not  fondly  emblazoned  on 
the  party  standards  of  Virginia  except  as  he 
had  stood  for  states  rights;  his  real  idealism, 
the  work  of  his  life,  was  repudiated.  And  what 
Virginia  assented  to  South  Carolina  proclaimed 
from  the  housetops  and  from  the  sacred  desk 
— Jefferson  was  a  failure.  Few  states  or  com 
munities  ever  made  so  momentous  or  fatal  a  mis 
take  as  did  Virginia  at  this  crisis.  John  G. 

1  Pro-Slavery  Argument,  255    (Ed.  of  1852). 
6 


82  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Birney  was  then  in  northern  Alabama  working  for 
abolition  and  pointing  his  followers  to  the  example 
of  the  glorious  Old  Dominion  as  she  threw  off 
the  yoke,  for  he  thought  the  decision  would  be 
for  emancipation;  the  Kentucky  abolitionists 
were  expecting  the  old  Mother  State  to  deliver 
the  great  blow  to  the  institution  which  was  then 
fixing  itself  upon  the  young  and  sturdy  West. 
Theodore  Weld  and  John  Rankin  of  Ohio  thought 
the  day  of  their  successful  preaching  was  dawn 
ing.  Verily,  the  nation  would  have  been  saved 
the  awful  struggle  of  1861  to  1865  and  the 
democracy  which  Jefferson  foreshadowed  in  his 
famous  Declaration  might  really  have  come  into 
being.  But  Virginia  and  the  South,  not  the 
North,  decided  otherwise. 

This  little  sketch  of  our  greatest  American 
idealist  would  not  be  complete  without  a  word  as 
to  the  sorrows  of  his  last  years.  When  he  left 
the  White  House  in  1809  he  was  compelled  to 
borrow  some  thousands  of  dollars  to  meet  the 
expenses  of  his  household  while  president.  A 
friend,  Mr.  Venable  of  Virginia,  and  President 
Madison,  endorsed  for  him  at  the  United  States 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  83 

bank  in  Washington.  During  the  second  war 
with  England  he  sold  some  property  in  Richmond 
for  his  friend,  Philip  Mazzei,  the  Italian  agent  of 
Virginia  in  Europe  during  the  Revolution,  the 
proceeds  of  which  amounted  to  some  six  thou 
sand  dollars.  Holding  the  money  till  the  end  of 
the  war  in  order  to  save  it  for  his  friend,  he  in 
vested  it.  But  his  own  financial  affairs  became 
so  pressing  by  this  time  that  he  continued  to  hold 
this  money  and  pay  interest  to  Mazzei  or  his 
heirs.  Thus  his  debts  waxed  from  year  to  year. 
Owing  many  thousand  dollars  already,  the  war 
of  1812  made  matters  worse  by  destroying  his 
market  for  tobacco,  leaving  his  many  slaves  a 
burden  to  him.  At  the  end,  two  fat  years  of 
commerce  and  fair  markets  were  followed  by  the 
severe  financial  panic  which  well-nigh  ruined 
Virginia.  Land  lost  more  than  half  its  value, 
Jefferson  thought  he  could  hardly  get  more  than 
the  amount  of  a  single  year's  rent  for  his  best 
tracts  in  1819.  His  debts  enlarged  relatively  and 
absolutely.  It  was  impossible  to  meet  the  obli 
gations  which  came  upon  him;  but  in  1819  his 
friend  Wilson  Gary  Nicholas  for  whom  he  was 


84  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

security  in  the  sum  of  $20,000  failed  and  Jefferson 
was  compelled  to  sell  lands  to  meet  these  unex 
pected  but  inexorable  obligations.  The  Master 
of  Monticello,  through  no  fault  of  his  own,  was 
thus  burdened  with  a  load  of  debt  that  would 
have  staggered  the  best  of  managers  and  Jefferson 
was  not  a  good  manager. 

From  the  first  year  of  his  retirement  thousands 
of  people  of  all  grades,  from  the  Marquis 
LaFayette  to  the  new-made  congressman  from 
a  western  or  southern  state,  visited  Monticello. 
There  were  no  hotels  in  Charlottsville  worthy  the 
name  but  Jefferson  was  good  enough  Virginian 
to  keep  "open  house"  and  always  to  invite  his 
guests  to  dinner.  Men  and  women  and  children 
availed  themselves  of  the  hospitality  of  the  great 
ex-president;  they  came  by  tens  and  dozens  and 
frequently  remained  weeks  at  a  time.  The  Duke 
of  Saxe- Weimar  and  his  following  cost  Jeffer 
son  a  handsome  sum;  LaFayette  spent  several 
days  at  Monticello  in  1824  when  the  auctioneer's 
hammer  was  already  raised  for  the  final  fall. 
From  1815  to  1826  it  was  a  constant  stream  of 
guests  coming  and  going  at  all  seasons.  When 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON  85 

the  University  of  Virginia  was  being  built,  the 
trustees  held  their  meetings  with  him;  politicians 
like  Clay  and  Crawford  stopped  on  the  way  to 
and  from  Washington.  Young  George  Ticknor, 
about  to  set  out  for  Europe  in  pursuit  of  his 
studies,  spent  a  week  at  Monticello  in  1815;  and 
Edward  Everett  was  doubly  welcome  for  his  fine 
bearing  and  good  conversation. 

Under  these  increasing  burdens,  Jefferson  first 
asked  Congress  to  buy  his  library  which  had  cost 
him  a  hundred  thousand  dollars ;  Congress  offered 
twenty-four  thousand  and  received  the  prize. 
Thus  began  in  thrift  our  great  national  library. 
But  this  scarcely  stayed  the  auctioneer's  ham 
mer.  He  next  turned  to  the  Virginia  legislature 
asking  for  the  privilege  of  selling  most  of  his 
estate  by  lottery — a  way  of  raising  money  still 
common  in  that  part  of  the  country.  It  was  an 
affecting  petition  which  he  sent  to  this  assembly, 
composed  largely  of  men  whose  political  fortunes 
had  depended  at  one  time  or  another  upon  him 
and  his  work.  He  enumerated  modestly  his 
sacrifices  for  the  state  and  nation ;  he  told  of  the 
offices  he  had  held  and  of  the  bitter  conflict  he 


86  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

had  been  compelled  to  pass  through  when  the 
Federalists  had  been  overthrown.  He  went  so 
far  even  as  to  remind  them  of  his  efforts  to  over 
throw  slavery  in  Virginia!  "If,"  he  concluded, 
"permitted  to  sell  in  this  way,  all  will  be  honestly 
and  honorably  paid,  I  can  save  the  house  at 
Monticello,  and  a  farm  adjoining,  end  my  days 
and  bury  my  bones.  If  not,  I  must  sell  house 
and  all  here  and  carry  my  family  to  Bedford, 
where  I  have  not  even  a  log  hut  to  put  my  head 
into."1 

Jefferson's  appeal  would  have  been  received 
with  warmer  sympathy  by  the  legislators  if  he 
had  omitted  all  reference  to  his  reform  work. 
His  ideals  were  not  the  ideals  of  the  men  who 
directed  Virginia  affairs  in  1826.  The  party 
which  he  had  organized  and  led  to  victory  in  1800 
had  come  to  be  the  very  bulwark  of  conservatism, 
the  guarantee  of  "things  as  they  are,"  not  as  they 
ought  to  be.  But  Jefferson  was  an  old  man,  a 
hero  of  Revolutionary  days  and  much  was  al 
lowed  him.  Some  opposition  was  offered;  oppo 
sition  which  threatened  even  to  deny  him  his 

1  Works  of  Thomas  Jefferson  (Ford's  Fed.  Ed.)  XII,  451. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON          87 

request,  but  his  personal  friends  were  many  and 
after  some  delay  which  gave  him  much  distress, 
a  bill  was  passed  providing  for  the  sale  of  Thomas 
Jefferson's  estates  by  means  of  a  lottery ! 

The  tale  of  his  distress,  and  the  way  he  became 
involved,  spread  abroad  and  soon  a  public  sub 
scription  was  made  up  and  the  money  forwarded 
to  his  friends.  He  was  much  gratified  to  find  so 
many  people,  especially  in  the  North,  ready  to 
repay  some  of  the  sacrifices  which  he  had  made 
on  behalf  of  the  general  good.  The  great  estate 
was  not  sold  during  its  owner's  lifetime.  The 
creditors  did  not  push  their  demands  until  after 
Jefferson's  death  in  July  following,  when  it  was 
found  that  the  lottery  had  not  been  successful, 
and  men  ceased  their  subscriptions  or  refused  to 
pay  after  the  great  old  man  was  dead.  The  beau 
tiful  and  valuable  estate  of  Monticello  which  had 
been  the  "handsomest  in  America"  was  sold  for 
less  than  a  third  of  its  real  value  and  Jefferson's 
debts  were  not  paid  from  the  receipts  of  his 
property,  but  from  the  pockets  of  his  loyal  and 
devoted  executors.  It  was  a  poor  showing.  A 
property  which  had  once  yielded  ten  to  fifteen 


88    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

thousand  a  year  had  not  been  sufficient  to  main 
tain  one  of  the  simplest  of  all  our  great  men,  and 
the  only  daughter  of  the  ex-president  was  left 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  kinspeople  or  the  cold 
charity  of  the  great  outside  world.  But  the 
South  Carolina  legislature  made  an  appropriation 
of  ten  thousand  dollars  to  Martha  Jefferson  Ran 
dolph,  which  enabled  her  to  take  her  family  to 
Washington  and  live  in  a  barely  respectable  way, 
where  she  had  formerly  been  "first  lady  of  the 
land." 

Jefferson's  death  was  as  dramatic  as  his  life 
had  been  eventful.  On  the  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  both  he  and 
his  friend  and  co-worker  of  1776,  John  Adams, 
gave  up  whatever  was  left  of  life,  each  thinking 
that  the  other  survived.  The  country  and  the 
world  noted  the  strange  coincidence  and  were 
convinced  that  God  had  ordered  the  end  as  He 
had  perhaps  directed  all  along  the  remarkable 
careers  of  these  chosen  leaders  of  a  new  nation. 


FROM  RADICALISM  TO 

CONSERVATIVE 

REVOLT 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN 
I 

NOT  many  of  us  know  John  C.  Calhoun  as 
he  was,  as  he  lived  and  moved  among 
Americans  of  the  last  century.  No 
political  party  looks  back  to  Calhoun  as  its  founder 
or  rejuvenator,  no  group  of  public  men  proclaim 
allegiance  to  his  doctrines,  no  considerable  group 
of  individuals  outside  of  South  Carolina  profess 
any  love  for  his  name  and  ideals.  While  all 
parties  seek  to  find  in  Jefferson's  writings  justifi 
cation  for  their  programs,  none  dare  admit  their 
present  policy  to  be  even  remotely  descended  from 
the  teaching  of  the  great  Carolinian ;  yet  Calhoun 
had  the  approval  while  a  young  man  of  the  great 
Virginian  and  died  more  beloved  by  a  greater 
number  of  Americans  than  even  the  Sage  of 
Monticello.  When  Jefferson  died  Virginia  wept, 
but  not  loudly;  when  Calhoun's  body  was  car 
ried  to  Charleston  in  April,  1850,  the  whole  state 


92  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

mourned  as  though  each  man  had  lost  his  father. 
For  weeks  the  ordinary  course  of  business  was 
interrupted  and  months  afterward  men  talked 
gloomily  as  they  met  upon  the  streets  of  Charles 
ton.  Only  twice  in  the  history  of  the  country  *> 
have  men  felt  so  keenly  the  loss  of  one  of  their 
leaders — December,  1799,  and  April,  1864. 

It  was   a  simple    life  that   Calhoun   led,   yet 
tragedy  played  with  him  as  with  its  true  child, 
and  a  tragic  fate  awaited  in  1850  those  who  saw  )  ^ 
the  grave  close  over  his  mortal  remains;  and  to 
day  the  people  of  a  great  state  think  of  him  as 
of  no  other  American  and  linger  sadly  about  the 
tomb  where  their  fathers  laid  him — a  people  who 
still  feel  more  keenly  than  all  others  the  weight  l^ 
of  Sherman's  terrible  blows  in  1864  and   1865, 
who  still  insist  that  their  cause  and  his  was  just. 

Like  Jefferson,  Calhoun  came  from  the  plain 
people.  His  father  and  mother  were  Scotch, 
whose  fathers  and  mothers  came  to  the  country  ^ l^ 
as  poor  immigrants  just  a  half  century  before 
the  Revolution.  They  traversed  the  mountains 
and  hills  of  the  South  from  Pennsylvania  to 
Georgia  in  search  of  a  place  to  build  their  cabin. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  93 

And  they  settled  finally  in  the  up-country  of 
South  Carolina  and  there  fought  the  Indians  in 
many  a  severe  struggle  both  giving  and  taking 
the  hardest  blows.  Calhoun's  grandmother  was 
killed  by  the  savages  while  his  uncle  was  mur 
dered  by  Tories  during  the  Revolutionary  war; 
and  all  the  members  of  the  family  of  the  two 
generations  which  preceded  John  were  engaged 
in  an  endless  struggle  with  nature  for  the  meager 
requirements  of  their  frugal  habits. 

Young  Calhoun,  born  in  the  year  following 
Yorktown,  surrounded  by  strife  and  famine  and 
bloodshed,  knew  none  of  the  pleasures  which 
boys  of  our  day  think  only  their  just  portion. 
There  were  many  slaves  in  South  Carolina,  but 
only  one  or  two  in  the  Calhoun  family,  and  as 
soon  as  our  hero  was  large  enough  he  was  put  to  , 
the  hard  tasks  of  frontier  farm  life.  But  mani 
festing  much  native  alertness,  he  was  sent  at  the 
,  age  of  twelve,  to  live  in  the  family  of  his  brother- 
in-law,  a  Presbyterian  preacher,  to  learn  some 
thing  of  books.  He  read  so  much  and  so  closely 
that  his  health  seemed  to  be  undermined,  and  his 
father  took  him  home;  and  from  his  thirteenth 


94    STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

to  his  nineteenth  year  he  daily  followed  the 
plow  alongside  his  father  or  the  negro  slave, 
Sawney.  It  was  decided  that  he  might  try  books 
again  and  he  went  to  live  a  second  time  with  his 
brother-in-law  who  was  now  the  head  of  a  large 
"log  college,"  as  the  backwoods  schools  were 
called  a  hundred  years  ago. 

This  log  college  was  not  such  an  institution  as 
Jefferson  attended.  There  was  no  light-hearted- 
/ness  in  this  Latin  school  of  the  wilderness  where 
the  boys  lived  in  small  cabins,  chopped  their  own 
firewood,  rose  with  the  sun  each  day  and,  study 
ing  the  ancient  classics  from  morn  till  night, 
rested  only  on  the  Sabbath.  The  teacher  was  a 
stern  master  whose  purpose  was  to  build  anew  in 
his  adopted  country  the  kirk  of  his  Scotch  fathers, 
and  right  well  did  he  perform  his  task  except  that 
many  of  his  pupils  became  great  lawyers  rather 
than  great  divines.  Calhoun  and  James  L.  Petigru 
and  George  McDuffie  were  all  of  the  same  school. 
Two  years  of  Latin  and  Greek  in  the  South 
Carolina  forest  school  were  sufficient  to  enable 
Calhoun  to  enter  the  junior  class  at  Yale,  his 
chosen  college,  and  he  finished  the  course  two 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  95 

years  later  with  the  highest  honors.  At  Yale 
the  life  was  stern,  Puritanical  and  cold;  and  so 
was  Calhotm.  In  no  sense  could  he  be  compared 
to  Jefferson  at  William  and  Mary  where  the  boy; 
was  ever  ready  to  join  the  gay  life  of  the  com 
munity;  there  was  no  gaiety  in  New  Haven  as 
there  had  been  none  in  the  South  Carolina  which 
Calhoun  had  known.  But  instead  of  "falling  in" 
with  the  political  ways  of  New  England  and  its 
proud  Federalism,  the  young  Carolinian  resisted 
firmly  whatever  influence  he  felt  and  was  disposed 
to  debate  even  with  President  Dwight  the  cause 
of  Thomas  Jefferson  his  beau  ideal  in  politics. 

From  Yale  to  a  good  Federalist  law  school  at 
Litchfield,  Connecticut,  he  next  went  as  though 
to  beard  the  lion  in  his  den,  for  his  law  teachers 
were  such  good  opponents  of  the  Jefferson  regime 
that  they  were  urging  New  England  to  secede 
from  the  unholy  union  with  the  Virginia  Delilah, 
and  make  a  country  of  their  own1  and  a  govern 
ment  after  their  own  hearts.  Calhoun  drank 
deep  of  the  learning  of  New  England  but  not  of 
its  spirit.  He  returned  to  South  Carolina  to 
1Gaillard  Hunt's  Life  of  Calhoun,  p.  15. 


96  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

continue  his  study  of  the  law  and  to  begin  its 
practice  in  1807.  While  successful  as  a  lawyer, 
he  had  less  liking  for  the  profession  than  had 
Jefferson,  and  in  a  few  years  he  settled  down  on 
a  farm  near  the  ancestral  home  in  Abbeville  dis 
trict,  there  to  make  himself  a  country  gentleman 
and  local  leader,  a  man  to  guide  his  neighbors 
and  now  and  then  to  represent  them  in  the  state 
legislature. 

But  two  things  had  happened  to  influence  pro 
foundly  the  career  of  the  young  up-country 
planter :  years  ago  when  his  father  was  a  member 
of  the  legislature,  which  then  sat  in  Charleston, 
he  had  attended  a  negro  auction  and  bought  a 
"likely"  negro  man.  It  was  an  unusual  thing 
for  an  up-country  man  to  do  before  the  opening 
of  the  nineteenth  century;  but  the  stern  Puritan 
of  the  frontier  yielded  to  the  pressure  of  aristo 
cratic  example  in  his  state,  and  put  his  negro, 
Adam,  upon  the  horse  with  himself  and  journeyed 
home.  From  that  day  Adam  and  not  Calhoun 
dominated  the  family  thoughts.  Adam  fixed  the 
destiny  of  the  Calhoun  children  who  in  turn  did 
much  to  shape  the  social  life  of  the  up-country. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  97 

Of  course  Adam  must  have  a  wife  and  soon  came 
the  negro  family  with  black  Sawney  who  was 
given  to  young  John  Calhoun  as  a  personal  serv 
ant.  John  and  Sawney  had  followed  the  plow 
together  and  together  did  much  of  the  daily  toil 
inseparable  from  farm  life;  the  Calhoun  home 
stead  was  not  yet  a  plantation. 

The  other  event  which  linked  Calhoun  to  aristo 
cratic  South  Carolina  was  his  marriage  in  1811  to 
Floride  Bonneau  Calhoun,  a  wealthy  cousin,  who 
was  already  identified  with  the  Charleston  aristoc 
racy.  The  Bonneaus  were  Huguenots  of  the 
highest  social  standing,  trained  in  the  traditions 
of  the  old  colonial  families.  Their  view  of  life 
was  very  different  from  that  of  the  rough  Abbe 
ville  district;  but,  as  always  in  Southern  social 
evolution,  the  older  families  readily  accepted 
alliance  with  the  promising  and  talented  mem 
bers  of  the  lower  order  and  thus  renewed  their 
vigor  and  strength,  at  the  same  time  consolidating 
the  masses  whom  it  was  fashionable  nevertheless 
to  regard  as  inferior.  Being  identified  with 
slavery  and  united  in  marriage  to  an  "old  family" 
Calhoun  became  an  integral  part  of  the  best  life 
7 


., 


STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 


of  his  state,  plain  and  democratic  as  he  was  in  all 
his  tastes  and  feelings. 

Calhoun  was  a  product  of  the  hills,  of  the  peo 
ple  who  usually  voted  against  the  low  country; 
his  father  had  been  looked  upon  with  contempt  in 
Charleston  when  he  ridiculed  the  federal  consti 
tution  which  in  South  Carolina  as  in  Virginia 
was  forced  upon  the  state  by  the  great  property 
interests,  slavery  in  particular.  The  Calhouns 
were  Jeffersonians  and  of  course  could  not  be 
counted  as  of  the  privileged  class,  yet  even  Pinck- 
neys  and  Rutledges  had  voted  for  the  radical 
Virginian.  So  that  when  young  Calhoun  settled 
down  as  the  master  of  an  estate,  "Bath"  by  name, 
and  gradually  gathered  slaves  and  horses  and  a 
growing  family  about  him,  there  was  no  denying 
him  a  place  in  the  existing  order  of  things.  Be 
sides  he  had  made  good  his  pretensions  by  going 
in  proper  season  to  Charleston,  if  not  to  partici 
pate  in  the  races,  at  least  to  acknowledge  that  the 
gay  city  had  its  claims  upon  all  gentlemen^ 

The  year  of  Calhoun' s  marriage  he  "stood  for 
congress"  for  the  lower  district  of  South  Carolina 
as  a  supporter  of  a  warlike  policy  against  Great 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  99 

Britain.  It  was  not  difficult  in  1811  to  win 
sympathy  in  this  region  of  the  South  by  "twisting 
the  lion's  tail,"  and  Calhoun,  whose  grandmother 
had  been  slain  by  Indians,  instigated  to  the  deed 
by  English  agents,  and  whose  uncle  had  been 
wantonly  slain  by  a  Tory,  was  the  proper  person 
to  "run"  upon  a  platform  of  defiance  to  England. 
Besides  the  whole  back-country  of  America  had 
been  irritated  and  angered  by  the  British  policy 
of  stirring  up  troubles  on  the  border  and  retaining 
on  her  pension  rolls  Indian  chiefs  whose  business 
it  was  to  prevent  the  growth  of  the  young  repub 
lic.  It  was  not  love  for  New  England  shipping 
that  caused  Calhoun  or  the  South  to  demand 
a  war  for  sailors'  rights,  but  the  desire  to  . 
be  rid  of  the  obstacles  which  England  was  COH*—| 
stantly  putting  in  the  way  of  building  up  the  I 
West.  The  West  was  an  ally  of  the  South 
and  every  new  state  established  in  that  region 
only  rendered  the  more  certain  the  isolation^ 
and  helplessness  of  New  England.  As  Calhoun 
thought  in  1811  so  thought  also  Grundy  of 
Tennessee,  Clay  of  Kentucky,  and  Porter,  a  west 
erner,  of  New  York — and  indeed  most  of  the 


ioo  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

men  who  were  returned  to  congress  that  year. 
With  his  place  in  South  Carolina  fixed,  a  fair 
reputation  as  a  leader  among  his  people  and  a 
definite  program  for  national  action,  Calhoun 
entered  congress  for  the  first  time  in  December, 
1811.  He  was  twenty-nine  years  old,  full  six  feet 
tall,  with  head  and  shoulders  slightly  inclined 
forward,  dark  hair  which  fell  down  over  his 
temples,  and  deep  set  eyes  either  blue  or  gray 
according  to  his  mood,  and,  withal,  an  air  of 
commanding  intelligence  which  readily  impressed 
itself  upon  all  who  came  into  touch  with  him.  He 
was  tender,  kind-hearted,  somewhat  abashed  as 
yet  when  in  the  presence  of  the  great,  rustic 
rather  than  polished  in  manner;  he  was  unac 
customed  to  drink  or  carousing,  pure-minded 
as  a  woman  but  unromanticl  never  having  read 
a  volume  of  poetry  in  his  life  nor  thought  out  a 
rhyme  even  during  the  days  of  his  courtship  with 
Floride  Bonneau,  his  wife.  But  this  modesty 
and  even  country  plainness  did  not  indicate 
absence  of  will  or  lack  of  energy  sufficient  to 
make  his  influence  felt  in  any  gathering.  Calhoun 
was  the  equal  of  any  of  the  great  men  who 


JOHN  C.  C*ALHOU'N<  161 

entered  congress  on  that  eventful  first  Tuesday  in 
December,  as  the  country  was  soon  to  learn. 

And  this  latent  power  and  boundless  energy 
of  mind  was  at  the  service,  like  Jefferson's,  of 
the  plain  back-country  people  who  were  beginning 
to  see  what  their  role  in  national  politics  might 
be;  he  was  ready  to  speak  for  democracy  which 
then  meant;  national  power  and  self-respect.)  It 
was  the  West  which  had  brought  Jefferson  to 
power  in  1800;  the  West  now  sent  to  Washington 
the  vigorous  young  men  who  were  to  rebuke 
Jefferson  and  his  successor  and  friend,  Madison, 
for  not  asserting  the  national  spirit  as  against  the 
brutal  and  overbearing  conduct  of  Great  Britain. 
It  was  not  slaveholding  South  Carolina  which 
spoke  in  Calhoun;  nor  was  it  the  timid  property 
interests  that  had  spoken  in  the  last  elections — but 
the  people  restive  under  the  restraints  of  older  and 
more  conservative  leaders. 

The  South  Carolina  group  in  congress  during 
our  second  war  with  England  was  almost  as  re 
markable  as  that  from  the  up-country  of  Virginia 
in  1800  when  Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe  and 
Marshall  all  hailed  from  the  same  neighborhood 


102  STATESMEN  t)F  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

/  of  the  Old  Dominion.  William  Lowndes,  Lang- 
don  Cheves  and  John  C.  Calhoun  were  not  so 
fortunate  as  the  men  who  composed  the  Virginia 
dynasty;  but  they  were  quite  as  able  and  one  of 
them  was  destined  to  attain  a  fame  as  great  as 
any  of  the  Virginians  save  Jefferson  alone.  The 
three  South  Carolinians  were  all  young  men,  all 
Republicans  and  from  the  same  section  of  their 
state — a  sort  of  up-country  product.  Clay,  the 
speaker,  was  embarrassed  by  the  ability  of  his 
friends  from  South  Carolina.  Notwithstanding 
the  complaints  of  some,  the  great  committees, 
naval,  appropriations  and  foreign  relations,  were 
guided  and  directed  by  them,  and  when  Calhoun 
suggested  that,  since  he  was  the  youngest  member 
from  his  state,  his  name  be  dropped  as  member 
of  the  committee  on  foreign  relations,  the  new 
chairman,  Smiley  of  Pennsylvania,  resigned  in 
order  that  Calhoun,  the  second  member,  might 
not  thus  escape  the  position  which  his  abilities 
suggested. 

The  development  of  the  South  under  Jefferson 
and  the  Virginia  dynasty  had  been  rapid.  Popu 
lation  had  poured  into  Kentucky,  Tennessee  and 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  103 

other  Mississippi  communities;  the  back-country 
of  the  nation  had  fallen  to  the  portion  of  the 
South.  Western  men  everywhere  were  support 
ers  of  the  Democratic-Republican  program.  But 
the  leadership  of  this  expanding,  restless  South 
was  fast  shifting  from  Virginia  to  South  Caro-  •}* 
lina;  and  economic  supremacy  had  already  de 
parted  from  the  Old  Dominion.  South  Carolina 
exports  in  1810  totaled  $10,600,000  while  those 
of  Virginia  had  fallen  to  $4,500,000.  Moreover 
tobacco,  the  great  Southern  staple,  had  given  place 
to  cotton  of  which  $15,000,000  worth  had  been 
grown  during  the  same  year.  South  Carolina 

v/ 

was  the  land  of  cotton,  and  the  up-lands,  not  the 
proud  and  domineering  Tidewater,  were  reaping 
the  rich  harvests. 

It  was  not  unnatural  then  that  the  most  power 
ful  group  in  Congress  in  1811  should  hail  from 
the  Palmetto  state  and  that  the  very  existence  of 
the  Virginia  dynasty  should  depend  on  the  good 
will  of  South  Carolina  and  Kentucky.  The  mili 
tant  reformers  of  1800  had  become  conservative 
before  1811  and  a  majority  of  Jefferson's  follow 
ers  had  become  what  would  to-day  be  called 


104  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

"stand-patters."  They  were  not  nationalists  and 
they  did  not  feel  the  sting  of  English  insult. 
Their  opponents,  the  Federalists  or  New  England 
leaders,  failed  likewise  to  recognize  the  rising 
spirit  of  the  people.  If  New  England  had  been 
nationalist  an  alliance  with  the  West  might  easily 

ive  given  them  control  of  the  country  and  a  new 
f lease  of  political  power.  But  they  failed  and  never 
again  were  Federalists  to  occupy  the  coveted 
>laces  at  the  national  council  board. 

.The  younger  Republicans  disgusted  with  their 
own  party  and  with  the  men  whom  they  had 
been  accustomed  to  call  great,  like  the  insurgents 
of  our  time,  Democratic  as  well  as  Republican, 
formulated  a  program  of  their  own  and  forced 
it  upon  a  halting  and  trembling  administration. 
They  gave  Madison  and  Monroe,  the  Virgin 
ians  of  the  old  school,  the  option  of  declaring 
war  upon  England  in  defense  of  the  new  na 
tionalism  and  on  behalf  of  a  militant  Southern 
and  .Western  imperialism  or  of  yielding  the 
leadership  of  the  country  which  had  come  to  them 
from  Jefferson.  It  gave  the  Virginians  much 
agony  of  soul  to  make  the  choice  but  they  were 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  105 

not  long  in  doubt  which  horn  of  the  dilemma 
to  seize.     With  the  administration  in  their  hands 
the  insurgents  found  little  difficulty  in  bringing 
Congress  around  to  their  view.     Thus  Calhoun 
and  Clay  and  Grundy  became  the  most  power 
ful  governing  element  of  the  rejuvenated  party 
and  the  West  and    South  proceeded  to  punish 
England  by  taking  from  her  the  long  coveted 
Canada  and  the  lucrative  fur  trade  of  the  "west 
ern  waters."    The  war  was  a  failure  from  the  start 
and  many  a  time  during  the  years  of  1813  and 
1814  young  men  like  Clay  were  about  to  go  to 
the  front  to  make  good  their  bold  promises.    After 
many  rebuffs,  the  failure  of  all  the  efforts  against 
Canada  and  the  direst  distress  among  the  people, 
the  struggle  came  almost  by  accident  to  a  close 
without  loss  of  territory.     The  older  politicians, 
the  Federalists,  who  came  near  regaining  control 
more  than  once  during  these  years,  retired  finally 
and  the  younger  men  chastened  by  disaster  were 
given  the  field.     Theirs  was  the  task  of  recon 
struction  and  of  building  well  the  foundations  of 
the  nation  which  they  had  insisted  had  been  in 
existence  from  the  beginning.     The  opportunity 


106  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

was  not  unlike  that  which  came  to  Washington 
and  Hamilton  in  1789  or  to  the  Republican  lead 
ers  in  1866. 

Aside  from  the  war  policy  of  1812,  Calhoun's 
name  is  not  associated  particularly  with  any  of 
the  events  of  the  time  before  1816  when  the  work 
of  reconstruction  was  to  be  done.  It  was  at  that 
time  that  Calhoun's  genius  as  a  leader  of  men 
and  a  political  philosopher  of  the  greatest  im 
portance  became  known  to  the  country.  The 
leadership,  the  initiative  of  the  time,  was  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  the  President  and 
,  Cabinet  practically  abdicating,  and  Calhoun,  after 
Clay,  was  the  first  man  in  the  House  group. 
jfi.  had  been  an  alliance  of  the  South  and  West 
which  supported  the  war  policy,  and  western  and 
southern  communities  had  furnished  the  recruits 
for  the  armies  and  the  leaders  for  the  campaigns. 
Now  that  the  war  had  come  to  an  end,  this  alliance 
was  expected  to  solve  the  problems  entailed  by  the 
war.  And  what  was  clearly  the  greatest  work 
of  the  time  was  the  leveling  of  the  Alleghanies. 
The  war  had  shown  above  all  else  that  easy 
communication  between  Washington  and  Pitts- 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  107 

burg,  Richmond  and  Cincinnati  was  the  great 
national  problem  and,  politically,  the  removal  of 
this  difficulty  would  make  the  union  of  South 
and  West  permanent  and  render  the  opposition  of 
New  England  harmless.  It  was  not  a  question 
for  constitutional  hairsplitting,  but  a  practical 
matter  that  must  be  met  at  the  peril  of  national 
existence.  The  policy  of  protection  and  home 
markets,  of  finance  and  banking,  was  secondary. 
It  was  in  this  light,  at  least,  that  Calhoun 
viewed  the  matter  of  internal  improvements  and 
consequently  we  find  him  taking  the  lead  in  this 
work — in  making  great  highways  and  canals 
which  should  make  markets  for  Kentucky  and 
the  Northwest  in  Baltimore,  Richmond  and 
Charleston,  and  bind  the  seacoast  people  to  their 
kindred  in  the  great  interior.  "I  speak  not  for 
South  Carolina,  but  the  nation,"  was  his  open 
defiance  to  those  who  would  put  states  rights  and 
local  advantage  before  his  large  scheme.  What 
he  desired  was  so  to  unite  the  interests  and  sec 
tions  of  the  country  that  a  second  Hartford  con 
vention  would  offer  no  terrors,  and  his  method 
was  to  apply  or  expand  national  powers  in  a  way 


io8  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

that  would  enable  the  government  to  overcome 
the  great  mountain  barriers.  To  find  money  for 
the  accomplishment  of  such  an  undertaking  he 
was  willing  to  enact  tariff  laws  and  even  to  give 
protection  to  American  industry  against  foreign 
competition,  but  his  fundamental  purpose  was 
always  to  build  up  the  nation  against  the  forces 
of  disintegration  so  painfully  prevalent  during 
the  recent  crisis. 

,We  have  here  the  key  to  Calhoun's  career — he 
sees  clearly  what  is  needed ;  he  is  an  ardent  patriot 
and  his  imagination  portrays  to  him  a  great  and 
expanding  country.  In  this  he  was  at  one  with 
Jefferson  who  could  violate  the  constitution  and 
his  own  understanding  of  his  powers  as  president 
in  order  to  make  room  for  the  future.  Calhoun 
was  ready  also  to  ignore  the  plain  terms  of  the 
fundamental  law  if  he  could  carry  out  his  purpose. 

But  other  men  felt  as  did  Calhoun.  Clay  saw 
the  needs  of  the  time  and  likewise  proposed  to 
brush  away  the  cobwebs  of  law;  he  was  more 
ardent  and  more  ambitious  than  Calhoun,  and  in 
order  to  hasten  the  realization  of  his  ambition  as 
well  as  his  scheme  of  national  greatness,  he  threw 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  109 

out  tHe  bait  of  a  protective  tariff  for  protection's 
sake  and  put  the  stress  on  building  up  home 
markets  at  the  "cost  of  the  foreigner."  Clay  con 
ceived  early  of  the  union  of  the  North  and  the 
West,  and  year  after  year,  until  1824,  offered  his 
increasing  measure  of  protection  until  he  won  the 
votes  in  the  House  of  practically  every  middle 
states'  man  and  a  majority  of  the  East.  Thus  the 
rivalry  of  the  two  leaders  became  patent  early  in 
their  careers;  it  was  to  grow  bitter  as  the  years 
passed  until  these  great  men  could  not  exchange 
friendly  greetings  when  they  met  on  the  street  or 
in  the  Senate. 

Monroe  offered  Calhoun  a  seat  in  the  cabinet  in 
1817 — the  war  portfolio — and,  though  the  same 
position  had  been  refused  by  Clay,  Shelby  of 
Tennessee,  and  Lowndes,  he  took  it  without  com 
plaint  or  condition  and,  it  may  as  well  be  said, 
made  the  ablest  war  secretary  the  Government 
ever  had  till  Jefferson  Davis  came  to  the  same 
office  in  1853.  While  Calhoun  was  at  the  council 
board  Clay  was  speaker  of  the  House  and  organ 
izing  his  following,  and  Jackson,  as  yet  an  unsus 
pected  rival  for  high  honors,  was  silently  growing 


no  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

upon  the  democracy  of  the  West.  Clay,  a  west- 
ern  man,  undertook  to  build  upon  a  system  of 
special  privilege  and  bind  the  wealthy  East  and 
the  pioneer  West  together — the  manufacturer 
and  the  producer  of  raw  materials;  Jackson  was 
making  his  appeal  to  the  imagination  of  the  plain 
people  of  the  older  states  as  well ;  while  Crawford, 
a  fellow  cabinet  member,  undertook  to  mobilize 
the  old  Jefferson  forces  and  popularity ;  and  John 
Quincy  Adams  had  the  advantage  of  being  in  the 
line  of  promotion,  as  both  Madison  and  Monroe 
had  gone  to  the  presidency  from  the  office  of 
secretary  of  state.  Calhoun  watched  this  "hurdle 
race"  with  keen  understanding,  while  his  fellows 
all  regarded  him  as  a  promising  but  immature 
politician.  Late  in  this  period  of  bitter  rivalry, 
all  the  candidates  realized  that  even  Calhoun  had 
been  listening  to  the  hum  of  the  presidential  bee, 
and  suddenly  all  turned  upon  him  like  the  prover 
bial  dogs  in  the  fight  for  the  bone.  From  that 
day  this  "captivating  man,"  as  Adams  Had  pro 
nounced  him,  became  most  uncaptivating  and  Cal 
houn  himself  never  ceased  to  long  for  and  strive 
for  the  presidency.  Much  of  the  bitterness  of 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN'  in 

his  life  and  many  of  the  woes  of  his  country, 
possibly  the  civil  war  itself,  may  be  traced  directly 
to  the  failure  of  the  people  to  make  him  chief 

magistrate. 

II 

In  1824  Calhoun  was  as  popular  in  Pennsyl 
vania  as  was  Jackson,  and  friends  in  that  state 
were  the  first  to  bring  forward  the  South  Carolina 
candidate  for  the  presidency,  and  he  in  turn  was 
not  averse  to  assuring  manufacturing  interests  in 
the  North  that  he  was  as  good  a  protectionist  as 
Clay  or  Adams.  But  Jackson  was  the  idol  al 
ready  of  the  Southwest,  Tennessee,  western 
Georgia,  Alabama  and  Mississippi.  The  ruthless 
policy  of  the  hero  of  New  Orleans  toward  the 
Indians  stimulated  the  border  appetite  for  new 
lands,  and  what  delighted  the  Southwest  pleased 
also  the  Northwest  where  the  presence  of  the 
Indians  was  as  unwelcome  as  in  Georgia.  Jack 
son's  fame  had  been  greatly  enhanced  by  his  ex 
ploits  in  Florida. and  he  was  rather  liked  for  his 
summary  hanging  of  a  few  foreigners,  especially 
Englishmen  and  Spaniards,  even  if  it  jeopardized 
the  peace  of  the  country;  and  the  more  the  older 


112  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

leaders  like  Clay  attacked  the  bold  general  the 
more  resolutely  the  people  called  for  Jackson 
as  their  future  standard  bearer.  Nothing  was 
clearer  in  early  1824  than  that  Jackson  had  won 
the  lasting  friendship  of  the  West. 

As  Calhoun  was  stronger  in  the  older  section 
of  the  country  and  especially  in  the  older  South, 
he  joined  his  forces  to  those  of  the  older  candi 
date,  being  convinced — and  in  fact  Jackson  re 
peatedly  declared  that  he  was  too  old  to  run  for 
the  presidency — that  four  years  later  the  West 
would  appreciate  his  conduct  and  he  would  be 
made  president.  Thus  we  have  the  first  under 
standing,  the  first  practical  agreement,  whereby 
the  West  was  to  support  the  South  and  Calhoun 
in  the  presidential  game.  Calhoun  was  chosen 
vice-president,  receiving  almost  unanimous  sup 
port,  while  Jackson  was,  as  the  rough  charges  of 
the  day  would  have  it,  defrauded  of  the  presidency 
by  a  bargain  consummated  in  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives  between  Clay  and  Adams.  This  made 
a  new  trial  of  strength  between  Adams  and  Jack 
son  certain  and  Calhoun  kept  aloof  from  the  con 
flict  though  he  was  regarded  as  a  friend  of  the 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUNi  113 

doughty  general.  Clay  continued  his  almost  dis 
reputable  effort  to  consolidate  the  North,  East  and  ^ 
West  in  his  own  behalf  by  urging  a  tariff  as  ab 
surdly  high  as  even  the  wool  growers  could  ask. 
Calhoun  was  compelled  to  sacrifice  much  of  his 
strength  in  the  North  in  order  to  retain  even  a 
remnant  of  his  popularity  in  the  South  where  the  ^ 
opposition  to  the  tariff  had  become  almost  fanat 
ical.  Still  Calhoun  was  elected  vice-president  with 
Jackson  as  president  in  1828  and  almost  without 
opposition.  He  was  everywhere  regarded  as  the 
successor  to  Jackson  in  1832  if  only  the  tariff 
quarrel  should  not  upset  all  plans. 

However,  the  way  of  the  politician  is  as  hard 
as  the  rewards  are  sometimes  high.  Calhoun 
must  bring  Jackson  to  a  low  tariff  view  and  he 
must  keep  his  South  Carolina  people  "in  hand" 
until  the  President  could  effect  the  change.  But 
Jackson  was  not  willing  to  sacrifice  his  following 
in  Pennsylvania  which  Clay  was  hoping  he  would 
do  in  order  to  please  South  Carolina.  The  West, 
his  base  of  operations,  was  not  aroused  about  the 
tariff  anyway.  On  the  other  hand  South  Car 
olina  had,  even  then,  a  reputation  for  having 
8 


ii4  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

things  her  own  way  and  particularly  now  that 
the  enemies  of  Calhoun  had  such  a  good  chance 
to  punish  him  for  his  too  broad  nationalism.  The 
tomahawk  was  therefore  taken  up  with  vigor  in 
the  Palmetto  state  in  1827-28.  William  Smith 
who  had  been  accused  of  profiting  to  the  extent 
of  $25,000  from  Hamilton's  funding  system, 
when  the  former  was  a  member  of  the  House,  and 
who  had  taken  "orders  from  the  Treasury,"  now 
came  out  boldly  against  Calhoun  and  all  his  ways. 
President  Thomas  Cooper  of  the  College  of  South 
Carolina,  who  had  made  so  much  difficulty  for 
John  Adams  in  1800,  also  took  up  the  hatchet. 
Before  the  assembly  of  the  legislature  of  1828, 
it  seemed  that  a  great  majority  of  the  people 
of  the  state  were  ready  to  repudiate  Calhoun, 
McDuffie  and  Cheves,  both  former  nationalists, 
now  repudiated  what  Calhoun  had  so  long 
stood  for.  The  Vice-President's  one  redeem 
ing  act  had  been  his  deciding  vote  in  the  Senate 
in  1827,  which  defeated  the  tariff  bill  of  that 
year. 

Calhoun's  ambition  for  the  presidency  was  in 
deed  about  to  encounter  rough  sailing;  his  polit- 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  115 

ical  existence  was  even  in  the  greatest  danger. 
How  could  he  stem  the  tide  ? 

Such  a  crisis  as  this  had  been  evident  per 
haps  to  astute  men  from  the  beginning,  for  he 
had  always  to  reckon  upon  an  alliance  of  the 
South  and  West,  and  the  West,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  must  favor  a  tariff  in  order  to  secure 
to  the  national  government  the  revenue  to  build 
her  highways  to  eastern  markets;  besides  Ken 
tucky  and  Ohio  and  even  Indiana  and  Illinois 
were  not  averse  to  a  high  tariff  on  commodities 
which  they  did  not  consume,  and  which  was  sup 
posed  to  secure  them  a  high  price  for  their  hides. 
The  Clay  scheme  of  a  union  between  the  West 
and  the  North  was  now  as  natural  as  had  been 
the  similar  cooperation  of  the  South  and  West  in 
Jefferson's  day.  The  two  sections,  however 
friendly,  could  not  work  together  now  that  the 
South  had  come  to  oppose  almost  unanimously 
the  so-called  "American  system"  which  Clay  had 
long  advocated. 

South  Carolina,  to  make  matters  worse,  was 
hastening  along  the  road  which  led  to  revolution 
when  the  whole  country  would  be  against  her. 


n6  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Her  remedy  for  the  tariff  was  refusal  to  obey  the 
law;  the  port  of  Charleston  was  to  decline  to  pay 
the  customs  which  the  federal  law  exacted.  This 
meant  war.  To  prevent  this  Calhoun  cast  him 
self  into  the  breach.  He  wrote  the  South  Caro 
lina  Exposition  of  1828  which  the  legislature 
adopted  as  the  language  of  the  state  without  giv 
ing  out  the  name  of  the  distinguished  author. 
,  The  Exposition  found  a  way  to  nullify  national 
«  law  without  violating  the  constitution !  The  state, 
all  states,  had  a  reserved  right  to  refuse  obedience 
to  so-called  national  laws  enacted  in  violation  of 
the  national  constitution  and  the  state,  not  the 
federal  courts,  was  to  decide  when  a  law  was 
unconstitutional !  This  was  what  South  Carolina 
desired,  for,  though  her  people  are  and  were  then 
(brave  as  any  in  the  world,  war  with  the  federal 
government  was  not  sought.  Meanwhile  Cal 
houn  was  to  do  what  "in  him  lay"  to  hasten 
Jackson's  favorable  action  on  the  tariff,  while 
the  people  of  the  state  refrained  from  all  hostile 
movements  until  he  had  ample  time  to  move. 
Calhoun  was  thus  the  link  between  Columbia 
and  Washington,  the  only  guarantee  of  peace 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  117 

in  South  Carolina.  It  was  a  fearful  responsi 
bility  but  Calhoun  was  compelled  to  assume  it; 
yet  all  his  good  intentions  proved  unavailing.  The 
right  and  patriotic  course  was  the  one  Calhoun 
selected  and  had  this  course  been  followed  Cal 
houn  must  have  succeeded  Jackson  as  president 
and  South  Carolina  would  not  have  risked  nulli 
fication.  An  evil  day  it  was  that  broke  the 
friendly  feeling  between  the  President  and  the 
Vice-President,  and  a  still  more  unfortunate  one 
when  Clay  in  1832,  declared  he  would  have  his 
high  tariff  increased  once  more,  against  "the 
South,  the  Democratic  party,  and  the  devil."1 

Calhoun  held  impetuous  South  Carolina  in  tow 
from  1828  to  1832,  and  this  was  a  feat  which  not 
only  showed  the  great  power  of  the  man  but  his 
love  for  the  nation.  What  he  hoped  to  do  was 
to  bring  congress  to  a  reasonable  tariff,  say  a 
general  average  of  20%,  with  which  all  the  South 
would  have  been  pleased  and  which  would  have 
been  ample  protection  to  Northern  manufactures, 
and  then,  attaining  the  leadership  of  the  country, 
go  on  with  the  great  nationalizing  work  of  knit- 
*McMaster:  History  of  the  United  States,  VI,  135. 


ii8  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

ting  the  South  and  West  together.  And  in  view 
of  what  the  tariff  has  done  for  us  and  of  Calhoun's 
unequaled  influence  and  power  as  shown  in  after 
years,  who  will  say  this  was  not  the  correct 
course?  It  had  been  the  union  of  the  South  and 
West  which  sustained  Jefferson's  administrations ; 
cooperation  of  South  and  West  was  still  the  basis 
of  the  national  policy ;  and  there  are  those  among 
us  to-day  who  look  for  a  solution  of  our  twentieth 
century  troubles  only  from  a  friendly  under 
standing  between  (these  really  democratic  sections 
of  the  countr)l 

But  the  sweets  of  high  office  proved  very  appe 
tizing  to  Jackson.  He  did  not  feel  so  old  at  the 
end  of  his  term  as  when  he  had  first  been  named 
for  president  by  his  friend,  William  B.  Lewis, 
in  1823.  And  when  Van  Buren,  the  "boss"  of 
New  York,  who  had  become  almost  necessary  to 
the  Administration,  persuaded  the  New  York 
Courier  and  Enquirer  to  call  for  a  second  term, 
he  did  not  peremptorily  decline  to  be  a  candidate. 
Calhoun's  paper,  The  National  Telegraph,  opposed 
at  once  the  New  York  proposition  as  premature. 
A  newspaper  controversy  followed  which  must 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  119 

have  aroused  suspicions  in  the  mind  of  the  Presi 
dent.  In  March,  1830,  Lewis  drafted  a  petition, 
asking  the  President  to  "stand  a  second  time"  and 
sent  it  to  a  friend  in  Pennsylvania.  The  docu 
ment  came  to  Washington  in  due  time  signed  by 
sixty-eight  politicians  and  prominent  characters 
with  no  hint  that  its  origin  was  not  in  the  Key 
stone  state.  The  "spontaneous"  call  from  the 
great  state  of  Pennsylvania  was  soon  published  in 
the  leading  papers  of  the  country.  Calhoun's 
suspicions  were  now  aroused  and  he  gave  out 
word  among  his  friends  that  the  "old  hero"  must 
be  opposed,  and  the  Pennsylvania  legislature  re 
fused  to  endorse  unanimously  the  "spontaneous" 
call.  But  New  York,  by  the  same  process  of 
diligent  cultivation,  added  the  weight  of  her 
growing  numbers  to  the  demand  that  the  Presi 
dent  "sacrifice  himself"  for  the  party  and  the 
country.  Calhoun  was  outclassed. 

Meanwhile,  however,  Van  Buren's  friend, 
James  A.  Hamilton,  son  of  Alexander  Hamilton, 
had  visited  Georgia  seeking  to  pacify  William  H. 
Crawford,  bitter  enemy  of  both  Jackson  and  Cal 
houn.  He  learned  there  that  Crawford,  whom 


120  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Jackson  credited  with  having  sought  to  have  him 
punished  for  his  high-handed  conduct  in  Florida 
in  1819,  had  not  opposed  the  General  on  that 
occasion  but  that  Calhoun  was  the  man  who  had 
done  the  fatal  deed.  With  evidence  of  this  in  his 
possession,  Hamilton  consulted  Lewis.  Lewis, 
wise  man  that  he  was,  kept  his  information  eigh 
teen  months  until  Jackson  |jad  reason  to  suspect 
the  South  Carolinian  of  a\**hasty"  ambition. 
Then,  as  though  it  were  only  a^^pall  matter,  he 
asked  his  chief  if  he  had  not  known  all  along  that 
Calhoun  was  his  enemy.  Astonished  at  what 
seemed  to  be  true,  Jackson  ordered  the  letter, 
which  Hamilton  had  brought  back  from  Georgia 
two  years  before  to  be  produced.  Lewis  coached 
Hamilton  not  to  produce  the  letter  but  to  secure 
one  from  Crawford  direct  which  should  settle 
the  question  at  once. 

Lewis'  web  was  not  complete  and  he  held  back 
the  Georgia  evidence.  This  was  in  the  winter 
of  1829-30.  Calhoun  was  endeavoring  to  hold 
South  Carolina  back  "while  he  brought  Jackson 
around,"  and  prepared  the  way  for  his  own  suc 
cession.  He  stood  as  yet  for  protection  in 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  121 

Pennsylvania  and  for  internal  improvements  in 
the  West.     At  this  juncture  the  Peggy  O'Neal 
gcandal  reached  a  climax,  and  all  the  blame  for 
the  trouble  about  Mrs.   Eaton,  the  former  bar 
maid,  now  wife  of  Secretary  Eaton  of  the  Cabinet, 
was  laid  to  Mrs.  Calhoun's  charge.     Mrs.  Eaton's 
reputation  in  Washington  was  of  the  worst;  but 
this  would  have  had  no  political  significance  if 
she  had  not  suddenly  become  the  wife  of  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Cabinet.     In  this  new  role  she  must 
either  be  received  in  Washington  society  or  be 
"snubbed."     Since  her  husband  was  a  Tennes- 
seean  and  very  intimate  with  the  President,  the 
latter  alternative  was  exceedingly  dangerous  for 
any  "Cabinet  lady."     Jackson  was  warned  early 
of  the  coming  storm;  but  storms  either  social  or 
otherwise  had  no  terrors  for  "Old  Hickory."     He 
decided  to  break  a  lance  for  Mrs.  Eaton  whom  he 
declared  to  be  as  pure  as  fresh-driven  snow,  and 
woe  to  any  one  who  opposed  him. 

Mrs.  Calhoun  came  from  an  old  Charleston 
family,  and  any  one  who  has  any  knowledge  of 
the  Charleston  aristocracy  knows  that  no  lady  who 
hailed  from  that  proud  city  would  for  a  moment 


122  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

allow  a  Tennessee  backwoods  man  to  dictate  to  her 
in  matters  social,  even  if  a  husband's  political 
fortunes  were  at  stake.  Mrs.  Calhoun  was  the 
wife  of  the  Vice-President.  She  was  the  most 
'popular  woman  in  Washington  and  her  husband 
-IT  .was  the  most  popular  man.  If  Mrs.  Calhoun 
refused  to  recognize  Mrs.  Eaton  it  would  be  very 
doubtful  whether  any  other  lady  in  the  city  would 
"know"  her.  And  Mrs.  Calhoun  refused  to 
recognize  Mrs.  Eaton  and  declined  to  take  any 
suggestions,  if  any  were  offered,  from  her  dis 
tinguished  husband.  The  gauntlet  was  thrown 
down  and  Jackson  hastened  to  take  it  up.  On 
September  10,  1829,  the  President  summoned  a 
cabinet  meeting  to  discuss  Mrs.  Eaton's  case  and 
to  give  his  advisers  his  opinion  which  was  prac 
tically  a  command  to  compel  their  ladies  to  visit 
the  unwelcome  recruit  to  Washington  official  life. 
Jackson's  commands  were  for  once  ignored. 

With  Mrs.  Calhoun  the  chief  sinner  in  this 
matter,  Calhoun's  burdens  became  too  great  for 
the  ordinary  politician  to  bear — though  Calhoun 
was  no  ordinary  politician.  The  understanding 
about  the  succession  rested  upon  the  most  unstable 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  123 

foundation  and  all  Calhoun' s  plans  for  the  future 
depended  upon  this  understanding  being  carried 
out.  It  was  an  understanding  much  like  that 
between  Jefferson  and  Madison  or  Monroe  and 
John  Quincy  Adams,  except  that  Calhoun,  not 
Jackson,  was  the  greater  partner.  Never  has 
there  been  a  political  agreement  between  public 
leaders  in  this  country  fraught  with  more  possi 
bility  for  good  than  this,  and  yet  this  was  broken 
with  the  utmost  disregard  of  truth  and  fair 
dealing. 

Nothing  shows  more  clearly  the  reality  of  this 
agreement  than  the  personnel  of  the  Cabinet. 
The  Vice-President  had  named  three  members, 
Ingham,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Branch, 
of  the  Navy,  and  Berrien,  an  anti-Crawford  man 
from  Georgia,  Attorney-General.  The  remaining 
members,  Van  Buren,  Eaton  and  Barry,  the  latter 
a  particular  enemy  of  Henry  Clay,  were  attached 
to  the  President.  The  abler  men,  except  Van 
Buren,  were  followers  of  Calhoun;  and  the  great 
Treasury  Department,  with  its  army  of  important 
subordinates  and  many  bank  officials  throughout 
the  country,  was  held  by  his  most  intimate  friend. 


124  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Under  ordinary  circumstances  the  Vice-President 
must  have  succeeded  and  this  prospect  was  fully 
understood  in  South  Carolina  where  the  angry 
leaders  were  able  to  hold  even  themselves  in 
restraint. 

It  was  under  this  high  pressure  that  Calhoun 
attended  the  famous  dinner  on  Jefferson's  birth 
day,  April  13,  1830,  and  there  heard  the  famous 
defiance  from  his  chief  which  foreboded  a  com 
plete  break-up  in  the  Administration.  Jackson 
offered  the  toast:  "Our  Federal  Union:  It  must 
be  preserved."  Everyone  saw  that  the  shaft  was 
aimed  at  the  Vice-President  and  no  one  realized 
its  significance  more  fully  than  the  ambitious 
Carolinian.  But  on  May  i,  the  Crawford  letter, 
applied  for  six  months  before,  was  received.  It 
purported  to  give  a  faithful  account  of  what 
transpired  in  the  Monroe  cabinet  meeting  of 
1818  in  which  Calhoun  criticized  Jackson's  con 
duct  in  Florida.  The  President  demanded  an 
explanation  of  the  "perfidy"  of  having  opposed 
his  interests.  Jackson  could  not  understand  how 
any  man  could  justly  criticize  any  of  his  acts 
and  he  could  not  appreciate  the  honest  ancl 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUNi  125 

faithful  support  which  Calhoun  had  later  given 
him.  Crawford,  who  had  long  been  a  bitter 
enemy  of  the  South  Carolina  leader,  had  dealt 
this  fatal  blow,  for  with  the  President's  opposn 
tion,  there  could  be  no  chance  for  him  to  reach 
the  White  House  in  years  to  come.  When  the 
breach  was  complete  Calhoun's  friends  resigned 
from  the  Cabinet,  his  paper,  the  Telegraph,  was 
deprived  of  the  support  of  the  Administration 
and  another  organ,  the  Globe,  was  a  little  later 
established.  Early  in  1831  the  Administration 
which  Calhoun  had  done  so  much  to  bring  into 
existence  and  from  which  he  had  hoped  so  much, 
was  rent  asunder  and  the  public  knew  that  Cal 
houn  and  his  friends  were  banished  from  court 
and  in  the  highest  disfavor.  It  was  generally 
thought  that  the  Peggy  O'Neal  affair  had  been 
the  cause.  Perhaps  the  first  cause  of  the  break 
had  been  the  changed  attitude  of  the  President  on 
the  question  of  the  succession.  This  change  had 
been  brought  about  by  the  intrigues  of  Lewis  and 
Van  Buren  as  well  as  by  the  love  of  power  which" 
grew  upon  Jackson  with  the  passing  of  the  years. ^ 
It  was  already  arranged  that  he  was  to  have 


126  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

another  term,  that  Van  Buren  was  to  succeed 
with  two  terms  after  which  Benton  of  Missouri 
was  to  come  in  for  eight  years!  The  combina- 
,-tion  between  the  South  and  West  which  Jack 
son  represented  was  not  to  be  followed  by  a  return 
of  Southern  men  to  the  presidency  but  of  North 
ern  politicians  who  had  been  out  of  office  too  long 
already.  The  idea  was  to  hold  the  West  and  the 
middle  states  together  and  destroy  all  chance  of 
Clay's  success.  Van  Buren  was  the  only  man 
who  could  carry  on  the  work  after  1837,  for  he 
controlled  New  York  and  would  control  Pennsyl 
vania  if  a  sufficiently  liberal  tariff  allowance  could 
be  offered.  It  was  natural  therefore  for  Jackson 
to  hate  Nullification  and  denounce  the  state  which 
he  thought  had  given  him  his  birth. 

Calhoun  in  1831,  like  Jefferson  in  1798,  pre 
sided  over  the  Senate  and  from  this  throne  of 
power  he  could  checkmate  and  harass  the  head 
strong  President  who  had  taken  the  bit  in  his  teeth. 
Clay  was  returned  to  the  Senate,  after  the  sharpest 
fight  of  his  life,  in  1831,  and  while  the  imperious 
Kentuckian  could  not  love  the  imperious  Carolin 
ian,  both  had  good  reason  to  loathe  the  "upstart 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  127 

and  arrant  martinet"  of  the  White  House.  Before 
Clay's  return  to  Washington  in  December,  1831, 
he  had  visited  the  Southwest  and  in  New  Orleans, 
Natchez,  Memphis,  he  was  received  with  an  en 
thusiasm,  an  outpouring  of  the  popular  applause 
which  convinced  him  that  neither  Jackson  nor 
Calhoun  was  the  master  in  that  region.  Later  he 
received  ovations  in  Ohio  and  Pennsylvania  which 
remind  the  student  of  the  great  popular  demon 
strations  which  have  been  given  in  recent  years 
to  Bryan  and  Roosevelt.  Clay  entered  the  Senate 
in  1831,  convinced  that  nothing  could  prevent  his 
election  to  the  presidency  the  following  autumn. 
Calhoun  had  watched  the  lower  South  with  less 
scrutiny  than  South  Carolina.  Everywhere  op 
position  to  the  tariff  was  growing,  becoming 
almost  fanatical  in  many  of  the  older  and  more 
populous  sections.  At  Hampden  Sidney  College, 
Virginia,  the  students  resolved  unanimously  not 
to  wear  the  "protected"  clothing  of  the  North 
and  on  commencement  occasions  in  South  Caro 
lina  and  Georgia,  men  like  George  McDuffie 
appeared  in  homespun  while  their  negro  valets 
wore  discarded  broadcloth!  Was  Calhoun  to  be 


128  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

blamed  if  he,  too,  counted  on  the  support  of  most 
Southern  states?  Had  not  the  legislatures  of 
every  state  from  the  Potomac  to  the  Mississippi 
declared  the  tariff  of  1828  both  outrageous  and 
contrary  to  the  intentions  of  the  founders  of  the 
republic?  Calhoun  thought  that  when  he  chose 
to  make  the  issue  the  President  and  not  himself 
would  find  public  sympathy  painfully  lacking. 
And  if  Clay  should  join  him  what  might  not  be 
done  to  bring  Jackson  to  his  senses. 

Still  Calhoun  was  a  nationalist.  He  did  not 
desire  to  see  the  issue  made,  least  of  all  a  clash  of 
arms  between  the  South  which  he  thought  would 
be  united  and  the  North  which  might  follow  an 
irate  President.  Hence  the  effort  to  bring  Clay 
to  an  agreement  that  the  tariff  should  be  revised 
downward.  The  Kentucky  leader  was  infatu 
ated;  he  was  certain  that  a  high  tariff  was  what 
the  country  wanted  and  that  Clay  was  the  most 
popular  man  in  the  nation.  The  great,  uproarous 
assemblages  which  greeted  him  everywhere  he 
went  had  intoxicated  him.  No  man  has  ever 
been  more  certain  of  anything  not  actually  real 
ized  than  was  he  that  Clay  would  be  the  next 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  129 

president  and  that  Andrew  Jackson  would  retire 
to  Tennessee  in  1833  a  wiser  if  a  sadder  man. 

Calhoun's  suggestion  that  an  alliance  should  be 
struck,  whereby  the  tariff  should  go  and  with  it 
the  common  enemy,  was  spurned.  The  tariff  with 
all  its  unpopularity  was  boldly  made  an  issue  in 

1832,  though  the  question  of  whether  the  national 
bank  should  be  re-chartered  was  raised  by  the 
President  and  welcomed  by  Clay. 

In  the  spring  of  1832  Calhoun,  convinced  that 
the  North  was  joined  to  its  idols  and  that  there 
was  no  chance  for  an  "adjustment  of  the  tariff," 
turned  all  his  great  abilities  to  the  "interposition" 
which  he  had  outlined  in  1828  and  which  South 
Carolina  had  been  panting  to  apply.  It  is  unnec 
essary  here  to  outline  the  revolutionary  course  of 
that  impetuous  state  during  the  years  of  1832  and 

1833.  The  program  which  Calhoun  had  sent  to 
the  legislature  four  years  before  in  strictest  secrecy 
had  been  made  known  as  his,  and  a  great  majority 
of  the  people  accepted  the  new  doctrine  without 
stopping  to  wonder  at  the  amazing  change  of 
front  of  its  author.     What  Calhoun  sought  in 
1832  and   1833  was  absolute  unanimity  in  his 

9 


1 30  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

state.  In  this  he  failed  though  his  majority  was 
overwhelming  and  from  this  time  till  his  death 
the  state  was  to  him  a  willing  slave,  a  pocket 
borough  more  unique  than  that  of  Henry  Clay  in 
.Kentucky. 

What  amazed  and  chagrined  Calhoun  after  the 
test  of  Nullification  had  been  applied,  was  the 
failure  of  the  South  to  respond.  Not  one  state 
endorsed  the  new  doctrine  though  Virginia  dallied 
long  with  the  dangerous  thing.  But  if  Calhoun 
was  bitterly  disappointed  at  the  failure  of  the 
South  to  rise  against  the  tarinl  Clay  was  sore 
distressed  to  find  that  all  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
great  popular  gatherings  which  he  aroused  was 
only  froth.  Jackson  was  reflected  by  a  majority 
as  unexpected  as  it  was  unprecedented.  In 
Louisiana  the  Clay  electors  were  beaten  two  to 
one  and  in  Mississippi  where  he  had  spoken  to 
"acres  of  people"  no  votes  at  all  were  registered 
for  him.  Jackson's  majority  over  both  Clay  and 
Wirt,  who  polled  almost  as  many  votes  as  the 
Kentuckian,  was  more  than  150,000!  The  "old 
hero"  was  overflowing  with  joy  when  congress 
reassembled.  The  people  had  punished  and 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  131 

humbled  Clay;  he  would  dispatch  Calhoun  in  the 
shortest  order.  Though  he  had  been  something 
of  a  nullifier  in  times  past  he  was  no  nullifier  when 
Calhoun  was  in  that  camp. 

South  Carolina  sent  her  idol  to  Washington  in 
December,  1832,  much  after  the  fashion  of  the 
great  German  Reformer  on  his  way  to  Worms 
in  1521.  Escorts  of  devoted  followers  saw  him 
safe  across  the  border  where  loyal  North  Caro 
linians  hailed  him  as  a  second  Luther ;  in  southern 
Virginia  John  Randolph  sent  him  his  dying 
blessing.  But  in  Washington  the  atmosphere 
was  sadly  lacking  in  warmth  and  men  peered  at 
Calhoun  with  the  sort  of  curiosity  with  which  they 
greet  great  men  whose  course  is  thought  to  lead 
to  ruin,  perhaps  ignominious  death.  Clay  came  on 
late,  as  well  he  might,  after  the  awful  blow  of  the 
preceding  November.  He  had  lost  his  dictatorial 
air;  his  short  and  ugly  saying  of  the  previous 
session  "the  South,  the  Democratic  party  and  the 
devil"  had  lost  its  force.  Common  men  who 
looked  on  that  winter  in  Washington  might  well 
have  wondered  whose  plight  was  the  worse,  that 
of  Calhoun  with  his  state  at  his  heels  or  Clay 


132  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

repudiated  by  the  nation  in  a  way  unknown  to 
American  politics. 

Instead  of  the  quiet  succession  to  the  presidency 
which  Jackson  and  his  friends  had  promised  him 
in  1828,  Calhoun  was  now  threatened  with  a  trial 
for  treason  and  his  state  was  put  under  the  ban  of 
the  empire.  But  Jackson  felt  the  justice  of  the 
cotton  growers'  complaint  against  the  tariff  and 
he  prepared  to  sweeten  the  bitter  pill  which  he 
was  making  for  South  Carolina  in  the  form  of 
the  famous  Force  bill.  The  tariff  was  to  be  re 
duced  from  an  average  of  about  forty  per  cent  to 
twenty-five  per  cent.  When  Clay  saw  what  was 
about  to  happen  he  seized  the  reins  of  legislation 
and  "put  through"  the  Senate  in  almost  indecent 
haste  the  famous  Tariff  Reform  bill  of  1833,  ac 
complishing  with  the  aid  of  Webster  and  without 
great  hostility  from  the  protected  interests,  the 
same  result  the  President  was  about  to  attain. 
A  combination  of  the  friends  of  Clay,  Calhoun 
and  Webster,  who  was  not,  however,  wholly  com 
mitted,  had  been  effected  and  the  sturdy  old  soldier 
in  the  White  House  who  had  just  been  reflected 
with  an  unprecedented  majority  was  powerless 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  133 

either  to  punish  Calhoun  and  South  Carolina  or 
reduce  the  tariff.  The  Force  bill  was  passed, 
but  South  Carolina  had  already  taken  steps  to 
avert  the  blow  which  was  really  not  much  of  a 
blow.  Calhoun  had  won ;  by  his  threatened  inter 
vention  the  nation  had  been  brought  to  terms ;  the 
greatest  and  the  extremest  protectionist  in  the 
country  had  revised  his  own  defiant  tariff  of  a 
year  before  and  the  manufacturers  themselves 
had  yielded! 

Ill 

It  has  been  customary  in  American  history- 
writing  to  treat  Calhoun  from  1833  to  m's  death  ' 
in  1850,  as  an  arch-conspirator,  seeking  the  over 
throw  of  the  government  which  he  served  and 
upon  which  he  had  bestowed  the  best  years  of  his 
life.  I  am  constrained  to  view  him  differently. 
Calhoun  was  a  nationalist  at  heart  to  the  day  of 
his  death  and  in  the  intimacy  of  private  corre 
spondence  he  spoke  of  a  severed  nation  ''bleeding 
at  every  pore" — a  state  of  things  which  he  said 
he  could  not  think  of  encouraging.1  What  he 

1  Jameson,  J.   R,   Correspondence   of  John  C.   Calhoun,, 
Am.   Hist.   Asso.   Reports   1899,    Vol.   II,   391. 


134  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

was  striving  for  during  the  last  seventeen  years 
of  his  life  was  the  building  of  a  "solid"  South 
which  should  follow  his  teaching  implicitly  and 
which,  cast  into  the  scales  of  national  politics, 
would  decide  all  great  questions  in  its  favor.  And 
it  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  expected  to  be  ele 
vated  to  the  presidency  as  a  natural  result — a 
position  which  he  coveted  as  warmly  as  did  Henry 
Clay  himself.  It  was  not  his  aim  to  break  up 
the  Union  but  to  dominate  it. 
s  His  method  of  uniting  the  people  of  the  South 
was  to  show  them  that  without  such  union  the 
greatest  interest  of  their  section,  slavery,  was 
doomed.  Calhoun  sought  to  weld  together  his 
people  on  a  basis  of  economic  interest  just  as 
Clay  had  sought  to  build  a  "solid"  North  on  the 
basis  of  a  high  tariff.  On  this  subject  parties 
had  ceased  to  differ  in  large  sections  of  the  North. 
Rhode  Island  Democrats  were  "tariff"  Demo 
crats;  Pennsylvania  made  protection  a  ^m^  qua 
non  of  cooperation  with  the  party  of  Jackson; 
Kentucky,  Ohio  and  the  Northwest  voted  solidly 
for  that  policy  of  the  nation  which  was  thought 
to  operate  in  their  favor.  The  South,  regardless 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  135 

of  party  lines,  had  come  to  regard  slavery  as 
either  a  good  thing  or  an  evil  which  could  not, 
and  ought  not,  to  be  eradicated ;  Whigs  vied  with 
Democrats   in  asseverating  their  loyalty  to  the 
"peculiar   institution."      Slavery   was    uglier    in  ) 
outward  appearance  than  protection,  but  in  prin-/ 
ciple  negro  servitude  and  a  protective  tariff  were^v 
alike — each  meant  the  exploitation  of  the  weaker  1 
and   more    ignorant   classes    of    society    by    the  f 
wealthier  and  more  intelligent.     As  a  matter  of/ 
morals    there    was    no    difference    between    the 
demand  of  the  Western  Reserve  that  a  prohibi 
tive  tariff  in  favor  of  their  wool  be  maintained 
by  the  federal  government  and  that  of  South 
Carolina  that   negro   slavery  should   be   forever 
guaranteed.     A   high   tariff  on   wool   compelled 
the  poor  white  man  to  give  his  labor  to  others 
without  recompense;  slavery  compelled  the  negro 
to  work  for  his  master  without  reward. 

While  Calhoun  never  yielded  a  hair's  breadth, 
on  his  main  program — unity  of  the  slave  states — 
he  never  failed  to  reckon  upon  the  support  of  the 
growing  Northwest  where  slavery  was  not  un 
popular  and  where  hatred  and  fear  of  the  free 


136  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

negro  had  become  a  sort  of  mania.     In  Ohio, 
Indiana,  Illinois  and  Iowa  he  had  ardent  and  able 
followers,  while  half  the  senators  from  this  region 
at  the  time  of  his  death  were  then  or  had  been 
owners    of    negro    slaves.      With    a    following, 
young,  ardent  and  growing,  the  great  South  Caro- 
/  linian  laid  down  his  program  of  national  protec- 
)  tion  to  slavery  as  ar  constitutional  guarantee)  and 
\  on  this  point  it  will  hardly  be  denied  that  he  read 
/  the  great  document  aright.     The  idea  that  slav 
ery  was  a  good  thing  which  the  churches  ought 
to  defend  came  easy  to  him  after  reading  Pro 
fessor  Thomas  R.  Dew's  famous  pamphlet  of  the 
year  I832.1 

Dew  was  the  ablest  publicist  in  Virginia,  and 
one  of  the  first  in  the  country,  a  teacher  of  polit 
ical  science  in  William  and  Mary  College,  who 
had  spent  years  in  study  and  travel  in  Europe, 
especially  in  Germany  where  he  had  come 
into  touch  with  the  greatest  thinkers  of  the 
time.  He  ridiculed  the  ideas  of  Jefferson  about 
human  equality,  slavery  and  emancipation  and  he 
called  Virginia's  attention  to  the  great  advantage 

*Dew,    Thomas    R.,    'Review    of    the    Delates    of    the 
Virginia  Legislature,  1831-1832,  Richmond,  Va.,  1832. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  137 

of  raising  negroes  for  the  ever-widening  market 
in  the  lower  South.  Virginia  should  become  a 
great  slave-producing  state.  In  this  he  had  been 
ably  seconded  by  the  late  governor,  William  B. 
Giles,  who  in  1829  published  similar  doctrines 
though  not  in  the  philosophical  and  unanswerable 
manner  of  Dew. 

Calhoun  had  prided  himself  on  being  a  follower 
of  the  great  Jefferson  and  he  had  sought  in  1833 
to  show  that  Nullification  emanated  from  that 
revered  authority.  Jackson  on  the  other  hand 
wrote  Nathaniel  Macon  in  1833  that  he  would 
coerce  South  Carolina  in  the  name  of  the  Sage 
of  Monticello,  and  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Jackson 
democracy  was  certainly  Jeffersonian  in  most  of 
the  items  of  their  faith.  Calhoun  thought,  or 
convinced  himself,  that  Dew  was  right,  that  he 
spoke  for  the  property  holding  classes  in  the 
South  and  that  his  arguments  must  become  classic 
in  a  land  teeming  with  slaves  whose  value  was 
enhancing  with  each  passing  year.  He  accepted 
the  teachings  of  the  Williamsburg  professor 
and  ever  after  preached  the  same  doctrine;  but 
he  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  undertake  to 


I38  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

show  that  Jefferson  was  antiquated  or  unworthy 
of  serious  attention  on  the  great  question.  Cal- 
houn  was  still  a  politician  and  he  knew  full  well 
the  value  of  a  great  name. 

When  Van  Buren  came  to  the  presidency  in 
1837,  it  was  not  by  the  votes  of  the  West,  nor 
even  of  Tennessee,  but  of  the  East,  New  York, 
Pennsylvania  and  Virginia,  in  the  main;  Van 
Buren,  though  the  political  child  of  Old  Hickory, 
was  a  conservative;  he  understood  better  than 
Jackson  the  meaning  of  property  and  a  fixed  social 
order.  Calhoun  saw  this  and  though  he  hated 
the  New  York  "magician"  he  extended  him  a 
helping  hand  against  Clay  and  Webster  and 
sought  to  secure  the  support  of  the  administration 
for  the  Democratic  nomination  in  1844. 

Having  been  shipwrecked  as  a  presidential  can 
didate  in  1831,  he  had  turned  to  South  Carolina 
to  "rebuild  his  fences"  and  hold  the  state  back 
from  its  headlong  course  on  the  road  to  secession. 
In  this  he  succeeded  and  after  banishing  from  the 
community  irreconcilables  like  William  Smith 
and  Randall  Hunt,  he  became  easily  the  one  great 
figure — the  personification  of  the  hotspur  state. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  139 

Regarding  the  tariff  as  a  settled  question,  he 
turned  in  1837  to  the  greater  problem  of  negro 
slavery.  The  people  of  his  state  had  never  pro 
nounced  "the  institution"  an  evil ;  there  were  men 
in  Charleston  who  wrote  pamphlets  as  early  as 
1803,  defending  it  as  a  moral  and  religious 
arrangement.  In  Georgia  the  prevalent  idea  was 
that  the  African  slave  trade  ought  not  to  have 
been  anathematized  as  piracy  in  iSiQ.1  Now  that 
Alabama  and  Mississippi  were  requiring  slaves  in 
ever-increasing  numbers,  Virginia  had  repented 
of  her  earlier  heresy  and  the  business  of  raising 
negroes  for  the  southern  market  was  not  frowned 
upon.2 

Calhoun  saw  the  full  possibilities  of  the  new 
situation.  He  would  unite  the  whole  South  as 
he  had  already  united  the  people  of  South  Car 
olina.  He  once  said  that  he  would  rather  have 
the  vote  of  Virginia  than  that  of  all  the  other 

1  Ames,  H.  V.,  State  Documents  on  Federal  Relations, 
for  reprint  of  Gov.  Troup's  Messages  on  the  subject,  1825. 

a  Gov.  W.  B.  Giles  in  his  collection  of  essays,  documents 
published  in  1829;  Dew's  book  already  referred  to  and 
many  pamphlets  published  in  1832-1833  show  this  con 
clusively. 


140  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Southern  states.  What  he  meant  was,  that  if 
Virginia  and  South  Carolina  came  into  close 
affiliation  in  party  and  national  politics,  the  other 
Southern  states  would  soon  follow,  and  it  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  if  the  Virginia  Democrats 
had  rallied  to  him  in  1843  ne  would  have  reached 
the  White  House  in  1845. 

The  aim  then  of  Calhoun  after  1837,  when  the 
"old  hero"  retired,  was  to  conciliate  the  Jackson 
Vmen,  the  people  of  the  growing  Northwest,  to 
win  the  approval  of  Van  Buren  and  to  reach  the 
[great  goal.  Van  Buren  dallied  for  a  while  with 
the  great  Nullifier;  but  the  panicky  times  con 
tinued  so  far  into  the  presidential  quadrennium 
and  Thomas  Ritchie,  editor  of  the  Richmond 
Enquirer,  who  usually  held  the  Democratic  scepter 
in  the  Old  Dominion,  was  so  timid  about  Cal- 
houn's  chances  that  no  progress  could  be  made 
with  the  premature  "boom." 

The  election  of  1840  was  a  reaction  in  favor  of 
the  West  and  of  the  Jackson  regime,  though  the 
Whigs  had  been  the  engineers  of  the  movement. 
The  West  rose  up  in  its  might  and  struck  down 
the  man  whom  "the  money  kings"  of  the  East  had 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  141 

put  into  the  presidency.  Tennessee  and  Kentucky 
and  every  other  Mississippi  valley  state  but  one, 
gave  great  majorities  to  William  Henry  Harrison, 
the  man  who  drank  hard  cider  and  wore  a  coon- 
skin  cap.  Calhoun  delivered  the  vote  of  his  little 
state  to  the  "arch-conspirator,"  Van  Buren,  and 
the  Old  Dominion  stood  fast  by  her  Democratic 
guns — a  result  which  augured  well  for  Calhoun's 
plan  of  securing  the  nomination  from  the  party 
of  Old  Hickory  111^1844. 

The  little,  but  growing,  circle  of  the  devotees 
of  the  South  Carolinian  realized  before  the  vote 
was  counted  in  the  Senate  in  1841  that  he  was 
the  "logical  candidate"  of  the  South  and  the 
South  would  surely  name  the  choice  of  the  party. 
The  new  president  was  not  a  man  of  promise,  he 
was  inexperienced  in  the  great  American  game 
and  besides  he  was  an  old  man  who  could  not — 
unless  he  turned  out,  like  Jackson,  to  grow 
younger  with  the  increasing  weight  of  respon 
sibility — expect  a  second  term.  Clay  was  the 
patron  of  the  President  and  this  injured  rather 
than  aided  him.  From  1841  to  1843  tne  ^^e 
South  Carolina  party  waged  a  campaign  for  the 


142  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Democratic  nomination  in  1844  which  Calhoun 
himself  directed  and  for  which  he  wrote  a 
biography  of  himself,  published  and  sold,  how 
ever,  as  the  work  of  R.  M.  T.  Hunter.  He  pre 
pared  newspaper  editorials  which  were  sent  to  his 
friends  in  the  Northwest,  and  his  admirers  like 
Robert  Winthrop  and  Abbott  Lawrence  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  stood  ready  to  sustain  his  cause  with 
the  ever-necessary  funds.  He  did  not  think  the 
Whigs  could  either  hold  together  or  retain  the 
"log-cabin"  popularity  which  had  been  so  lavishly 
bestowed.1 

It  was  a  pathetic  figure  which  Calhoun  pre 
sented  to  his  friends  and  to  the  well-informed  in 
general ;  he  was  probably  the  cleanest  man  in  pub 
lic  life,  he  hated  the  game  of  politics  with  its 
subtleties  and  its  pitfalls  and  he  had  sworn  to 
himself  that  if  ever  he  came  to  power  he  would 
apply  the  axe  to  the  great  tree  of  patronage  and 
affiliated  corruption;  he  knew  the  workings  of 
the  American  government  better  than  any  of  his 
contemporaries  and  he  appreciated  fully  the  real 

Jameson:  Correspondence  of  John  C.  Calhoun,  472, 
473-480. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  143 

needs  of  the  three  great  sections  of  the  country 
and  was  willing  to  "give  and  take"  if  men  would 
only  leave  his  favorite  property,  negro  slaves, 
alone.  For  such  a  man  to  be  weaving  the  skein 
of  politics  and  sowing  the  seeds  of  political  in 
trigue,  in  short,  to  be  compelled  to  court  small 
politicians  and  drive  hard  bargains  with  the  sel 
fish  business  interests  while  he  himself  grew,  both 
consciously  and  unconsciously,  to  be  a  champion 
of  the  greatest  "interest"  of  the  time,  was  and 
still  is,  a  subject  of  sympathy  and  interest.  I 
believe  that  if  he  had  been  permitted  this  time  to 
control  the  machinery  of  the  party  with  which  he 
was  ready  to  ally  himself  and  to  take  the  presi 
dent's  chair  in  1845,  we  should  have,  as  historians, 
to  record  a  different  story  from  that  which  now 
occupies  our  pages,  and  that  both  the  Texas  and 
the  Oregon  questions  would  have  been  settled 
peaceably  and  somewhat  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
angry  and  contending  groups  of  politicians  and 
their  constituents. 

But  Calhoun  had  passed  the  buoyant  period  of 
life,  and  he  had  done  and  said  so  much  that  poli 
ticians  like  Ritchie  and  the  able  intriguer,  Robert 


144  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

J.  Walker  of  Mississippi,  Southern  men  though 
they  were,  feared  to  commit  to  him  the  baton  of 
leadership;  they  thought  Calhoun's  nomination 
would  surely  mean  Clay's  election,  the  worst 
thing,  in  their  minds  and  Calhoun's,  which  could 
possibly  happen.  He  could  not  win  their  sup 
port  and  reluctantly  he  withdrew  from  the  one 
sided  race  and  entered  Tyler's  cabinet  only  to 
plan  the  more  industriously  for  the  nomination 
in  1848.  Though  Von  Hoist  says  that  he  was 
simply  intriguing  for  slavery  and  Texas. 

To  me  this  latter  seems  an  untenable  view. 
He  had  favored  annexation  but  not  ardently;  the 
governor  of  South  Carolina  as  late  as  November, 
1836,  had  denounced  the  so-called  Texas  scheme 
and  George  McDuffie  can  hardly  be  supposed  to 
have  been  ill  informed  as  to  Calhoun's  wishes.1 
Calhoun  went  into  Tyler's  cabinet  to  guide  an 
administration  which  sorely  needed  his  strong 
hand  and  towering  reputation  and,  as  has  been 
said,  to  "shape  things"  for  his  own  nomination 
in  1848.  That  he  "pushed"  the  annexation 
program  which  was  almost  completed  when  he 
*Niles  Register,  December  10,  1836. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  145 

took  up  his  portfolio,  cannot  be  doubted;  but  it 
proves  nothing.  What  was  equally  important 
and  more  significant  as  to  his  own  aims  and  pur 
poses  was  his  prompt  overture  to  Old  Hickory 
through  A.  J.  Donelson.  The  letter  of  the  great 
Secretary  to  Donelson  in  September,  I8441  and 
those  of  Calhoun's  friends  like  James  Gadsden  of 
January,  i844,2  show  that  he  and  they  felt  that 
his  entry  into  Tyler's  cabinet  was  to  save  the 
Democratic  party  and  to  bring  about  the  old 
alliance  between  South  and  .West  which  had 
promised  him  so  much  in  1828.  It  required  even 
more  of  sacrifice  on  his  part  to  invite  Jackson's 
support  and  cooperation  in  1844  than  it  had  to 
approach  Van  Buren  in  1837,  but  he  was  equal  to 
the  occasion.  Not  only  did  he  seek  to  bring  his 
faction  of  the  party  into  line  with  the  western 
faction  which  Benton  fairly  represented  at  that 
time,  but  he  took  such  part  in  the  Polk  and  Dal 
las  campaign  as  justly  to  entitle  him  to  much  of 
the  honor  of  the  victory  which  followed.  His 

1  Jameson,  J.  F.,  Corresp.  of  J.  C.  Calhoun.    Am.  Hist. 
Rep.   of  '99,    u,   614. 

•Ibid,  916. 
10 


146  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

ardent  South  Carolinians  he  held  in  check  with 
a.  steady  hand  ;*  he  sought  allies  in  New  England 
where  there  was  always  a  very  considerable  group 
of  Calhoun  admirers  and  he  looked  steadily  to 
the  Northwest  where  the  demand  for  the  annex 
ation  of  Oregon  was  almost  as  strong  as  that  in 
the  South  for  Texas.  His  immediate  aim  was  to 

( deliver  a  final  and  crushing  blow  to  Clay  "[who] 
:  pad  done  much  to  distract  the  South  and  to  keep 

(the  West  out  of  its  true  position."2  He  was 
almost  certain,  as  early  as  September  17,  that 
Clay  would  be  defeated  and  Polk  elected;  "it 
will  be  the  last  of  Clay"  he  had  said,  and  the 
result  justified  the  prophecy. 

When  the  work  was  done  and  Polk,  "the  un 
known,"  came  on  to  Washington  for  the  inaugu 
ration,  no  overture  was  made  to  the  Carolinian 
to  remain  at  the  national  council  board,  an  over 
sight  which  was  intentional  and  which  Calhoun 
must  have  regarded  as  proof  that  Jackson  had 

Jameson,  Corresp.  616,  "The  excitement  in  a  portion  of 
Carolina  to  which  you  refer  has  gradually  subsided,  and  will 
give  no  further  trouble.  I  had  to  act  with  great  delicacy, 
but  at  the  same  time  firmness  in  relation  to  it";  also,  ibid, 
624. 

"Jameson,   Corresp.  617. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  147 

resisted  his  kindly  attentions  of  the  preceding  au 
tumn,  for  was  not  the  new  president  a  protege  of 
Old  Hickory  and  did  he  not  come  directly  from 
the  Hermitage?  But  Polk  may  well  have  feared 
to  sit  down  in  cabinet  meetings  with  a  man  who 
towered  above  him  quite  as  much  as  above  Tyler 
and  to  whom  a  large  element  of  the  South  would 
look  as  the  governor  of  the  country.  Gratitude 
is  not  a  necessary  element  in  the  make-up  of  a 
public  man,  certainly  it  was  not  to  Polk  in  this 
case.  Calhoun  who  had  done  so  much  to  secure 
Polk  his  high  post  and  great  opportunity  was  al 
most  snubbed,  so  curtly  was  he  pushed  aside,  and 
the  reader  of  the  annals  of  the  time  cannot  but 
sympathize  with  his  note  to  his  daughter  wherein 
he  says,  "it  was  scarcely  in  the  power  of  Mr.  Polk 
to  treat  me  badly."1 

IV 

The  old  hound  never  hears  the  horn  but  he 
pricks  up  his  ears,  and  Calhoun  on  his  way  home, 
heard  with  keen  pleasure  a  toast,  offered  at  a  din 
ner  in  his  honor  at  Richmond  by  Ritchie,  himself, 
in  which  he  was  addressed  as  "the  next  president 
1  Jameson,  Corresp.,  656. 


148  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

of  the  United  States."1  How  many  times  had 
he  not  heard  words  like  these  in  South  Carolina 
and  the  lower  South;  but  never  before  from  the 
Virginia  king-maker.  He  was  quick  to  note  the 
incident  and  to  inform  his  favorite  daughter  of 
the  changed  attitude  of  Ritchie  who  was  then 
about  to  take  up  his  new  duties  as  editor  of  the 
Washington  Union,  the  administration  organ. 

The  leaders  of  opinion  in  the  Northwest,  men 
like  Douglas  of  Illinois  and  the  Dodges  of  Iowa 
and  Wisconsin,  had  planned  a  great  Mississippi 
valley  convention  which  was  to  meet  in  Memphis 
^n  November,  1845.  The  Southern  states  and 
their  railway  builders  were  invited  to  attend. 
General  James  Gadsden  of  South  Carolina,  Major 
Tait  of  Alabama,  both  railroad  presidents,  and 
the  industrial  leaders  generally  were  interested  in 
the  meeting.  The  Southerners  were  particularly 
concerned  with  expanding  their  transportation 
facilities  northwestward,  while  the  upper  Missis 
sippi  states  were  already  looking  toward  the 
Pacific.  By  combining  these  groups  of  interests 
the  region  which  had  dominated  the  country  dur- 
id,  650. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN!  149 

ing  the  Jackson  "reign"  would  come  again  to  V^ ' 
power;  congress  could  be  induced  to  make  land 
grants  to  new  railroad  ventures  and  the  post 
master  general  would  give  bonuses  for  carrying 
the  mails.  All  this  would  hasten  Western  state- 
making  and  permanently  fix  the  power  of  the 
proposed  Southern-Western  alliance.  The  one 
great  interest  of  the  South,  cotton  growing, 
would  be  advanced  and  its  twin  sister,  slavery, 
the  more  firmly  established,  for  the  growing  trade 
between  the  farmers  of  the  Ohio  and  the  upper 
Mississippi  valleys  and  the  plantations  of  the  -&~- 
South  would  tie  the  two  sections  together. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  surprising  \ 
that  we  find  Calhoun  presiding  over  the  Memphis  \ 
convention.     Indeed  so  full  of  the  new  or,  with 
him,  old  program  and  its  probable  consequences 
had  he  become  that  he  surpassed  the  utmost  ex 
pectations  of  the  industrial  promoters  of  the  West 
by  commending  to   the  convention  and   to   the 
country,  in  his  carefully  prepared  address,1  a  re 
turn  to  the  era  and  the  idea  of  internal  improve 
ments  which  he  had  discarded  and  denounced  a 

'Cralle,  R.  K.,  Works  of  Calhoun,  V.  293-311. 


ISO  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

dozen  years  before.  To  the  new  railroad  ven 
tures  within  state  boundaries  he  would  have  the 
federal  government  guarantee  long  term  mail  con 
tracts  at  rates  above  the  accustomed  price,  and  free 
iron  for  construction  purposes  which  would  have 
amounted  to  a  bonus  of  $2,000  a  mile,  while  to 
those  within  the  territories  he  was  not  opposed 
to  direct  government  grants.  Canal  builders  and 
cities  like  Chicago  and  Louisville  where  good 
harbor  facilities  were  wanted  should  receive 
assistance  on  the  ground  that  the  Mississippi  and 
its  tributaries  were  "inland  seas"  which  might  be 
improved  under  the  powers  of  the  constitution 
which  allowed  the  harbors  of  the  Atlantic  and 
Gulf  coasts  to  draw  large  sums  from  the  national 
strong  box.  The  superficial  student  of  Calhoun's 
speeches  and  teachings  between  1833  and  1845 
may  be  surprised  at  this  apparent  desertion  of  his 
national  policy;  not  so  with  him  who  reads  be 
tween  the  lines  and  who  fully  comprehends  the 
purposes  and  the  motives  of  the  man.  He  is  now 
as  always,  a  nationalist,  if  only  the  politicians  will 
allow,  but  a  nationalist  who,  like  most,  if  not  all, 
other  leaders  in  American  public  life,  demanded 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  151 

first  protection  to  his  constituents.  The  first 
duty  of  Webster  in  congress  when  a  young  man 
was  to  champion  the  cause  of  New  England  free 
traders  who  made  up  the  majority  of  his  constit 
uents;  but  in  1828,  when  his  constituents  had 
become  manufacturers,  he  made  quite  an  able 
defense  of  the  cause  of  protection  and  two  years 
later  he  was  the  author  of  a  doctrine  of  "new 
nationality"  since  the  nation  was  the  only  power 
which  could  give  protection ;  and  finally  when  his 
ambition  to  be  president  had  become  as  over 
powering  as  Calhoun's  he  could  make  eloquent 
periods  in  defense  of  the  Union  and  of  slavery. 
Calhoun's  course  was  not  different:  he  was  a 
nationalist  when  South  Carolina  adhered  to  the 
same  view,  he  became  a  particularist  when  South 
Carolina's  interests  were  endangered;  he  was  al 
ways  a  pro-slavery  man  because  both  his  state 
and  his  section  were  pro-slavery. 

But  his  "defection"  at  Memphis,  his  "inland 
seas"  doctrines  gave  smaller  men  in  the  South 
much  trouble;  men  who  see  only  the  small  space 
"before  their  noses"  thought  that  he  had  deserted 
the  South,  that  he  was  granting  the  latitudinarian 


152  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

doctrine  which  would  certainly  lead  to  national 
interference  with  slavery.  Jefferson  Davis  re 
fused  to  apologize  for  or  to  defend  the  new  idea1 
though  he  later  learned  to  plan  great  combinations 
like  that  which  underlay  the  Memphis  address. 
Calhoun's  followers  labored  under  the  blighting 
inability  of  not  being  able  to  see  that  twice  two 
make  four,  and  they  began  their  campaign  of 
"doubts  and  fears"  which  have  so  often  defeated 
the  larger  planning  of  the  larger  men  of  the  re 
public.  The  administration  could  not  understand 
Calhoun  except  that  Polk  knew  that  he  desired 
the  presidency  in  1848;  Thomas  Ritchie  was 
now,  only  six  months  after  the  Richmond  toast, 
certain  that  the  Democracy  would  be  defeated  if 
it  ventured  such  a  program  and  such  a  nomina 
tion;  South  Carolina,  under  the  influence  of  the 
epigones  of  nullification,  protested  that  even  "the 
prophet"  had  gone  astray.  There  was  probably 
ever  a  chance  for  Calhoun  after  the  break  with 
ackson,  but  Calhoun  could  not  so  understand  the 
'signs  of  the  time.  His  very  virtues  were  weights 

1  Davis,    Mrs.    Jefferson,    Memoirs    of    Jefferson    Davis, 
211-213;  Dodd,  W.  E.,  Life  of  Jefferson  Davis,  68. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  153 

about  his  feet;  small  men  are  .offended  at  the  very 
presence  of  greatness.  Besides,  Calhoun  had  per 
mitted  himself  to  be  blinded  by  the  love  of  prop-i 

T 

erty  rights,  hot  of  property,  for  never  was  there 
a  less  avaricious  statesman.  He  had  uncon 
sciously  become  a  representative  of  the  "inter 
ests,"  a  reactionary  to  whom  the  chief  value  of 
the  Constitution  consisted  in  its  guarantee  of 
property  against  the  aggressions  of  democracy 
and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  younger  generation  of 
Americans  on  behalf  of  human  rights  and  per 
sonal  liberty.  Returning  from  his  visit  to  the 
Southwest,  he  wrote  his  daughter  that  every 
where  he  went  the  people  flocked  to  see  and  hear 
him.  The  crowds  were  even  greater  than  those 
which  had  greeted  the  "General"  on  his  last  tour 
and  this  seemed  to  give  him  much  comfort.1 
When  he  reached  South  Carolina  it  was  generally 
understood  that  he  had  retired  to  his  plantation 
at  Fort  Hill  in  the  beautiful  up-country  region  to 
await  the  call  of  his  party  to  enter  upon  the  presi 
dential  canvass  as  standard-bearer  in  1848. 
But  the  coming  war  with  Mexico  was  the  talk 
1  Jameson,  Corresp.  674. 


154  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

everywhere,  and  Polk,  in  his  first  annual  message, 
seemed  to  court  a  conflict  with  England  as  well. 
In  other  words,  Polk  took  the  recent  platform  of 
his  party  calling  for  "all  Texas  and  all  Oregon'' 
seriously.  He  was  a  simple,  honest  man  who  be 
lieved  in  the  creed  he  professed.  Calhoun  was 
astounded  at  such  simplicity ;  he  had  thought  the 
preelection  talk  was  intended  only  to  win  votes. 
Not  only  had  the  President  come  out  for  "all 
Oregon  or  fight"  but  congress  began  its  deliber 
ations  with  resolutions  to  give  England  notice  of 
the  American  intentions  which  Calhoun  said 
would  surely  bring  war.1 

Feeling  that  the  country  was  at  the  threshold 
of  a  great  crisis,  he  indicated,  and  he  had  only  to 
indicate,  that  he  would  accept  another  term  in 
the  United  States  Senate.  On  his  way  to  Wash 
ington,  the  London  Times  hailed  him  as  the  friend 
of  peace  and  the  New  York  Journal  of  Commerce 
thought  he  would  be  the  savior  of  his  country. 
The  head  of  Tammany  Hall  wrote  that  "J.  C. 
Calhoun  needs  but  to  stand  still  and  as  sure  as 
the  day  comes,  so  sure  will  '49  see  him  where  his 

'Ibid,  674. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  155 

deserts  long  since  should  have  placed  him."1 
Even  the  American  minister  to  England  wrote 
him  in  detail  about  the  state  of  politics  there  in 
order  that  he  might  save  the  country  in  spite  of 
the  President.  Calhoun's  friends  were  sounding 
public  opinion  everywhere  and  informing  him 
daily  that  he  would  certainly  be  the  next  presi 
dent,  though  one  group  of  them  urged  him  to 
stand  with  Polk  and  for  the  war,  while  the  other 
urged  the  "masterly  inactivity"  which  should  win 
without  war  both  Texas  and  Oregon.  The  latter 
gained  his  ear,  and  his  attitude2  was  fixed.  If 
ever  Calhoun  had  reason  to  think  himself  infal 
lible,  it  was  at  this  time  when  all  the  world  was 
pronouncing  him  the  great  statesman,  the  great 
Calhoun !  It  was  the  last  time  in  his  long  career  t 
that  he  saw  the  highest  prize  in  America  glitter 
ing  before  him. 

Calhoun  stood  with  the  South  on  the  Oregon 
question,  i.  e.  he  was  a  moderate.  His  position 
was  a  deciding  factor  in  the  compromise  which 
fixed  the  boundary  at  the  49th  parallel  and  he 

1  Letter  of  Fernando  Wood  in  Jameson,  Corresp.  1065-67. 

"Jameson,  Corresp.,  1058-60. 


.  156  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

received  the  thanks  of  conservative  men  in  all 
sections  regardless  of  party  affiliations.1  He 
thought  that  he  had  prevented  war  with  England 
and  there  is  much  reason  to  agree  with  him. 
In  this  he  received  the  hearty  endorsement  of 
most  people  of  the  South,  too,  where  a  war 
on  behalf  of  the  far-off  Oregon  country  was 
certainly  not  desired.  But  when  the  adminis 
tration  forced  hostilities  with  Mexico  he  de 
nounced  the  President's  program  and  declared 
that  Polk  did  not  desire  a  peaceful  solution  of 
the  Texas  problem.  In  fact,  he  saw  early  what 
direction  the  leaders  of  the  party  were  taking, 
namely,  national  aggrandizement  at  the  expense 
of  Mexico,  and  he  foretold  the  ruin  that  such  a 
policy  would  bring  upon  the  slavery  interest 
whose  champions  were  headlong  leaders  of  what 
may  properly  be  called  the  imperialistic  wing  of 
the  Democratic  party.  All  of  Mexico,  not  all  of 
Oregon,  is  what  men  like  Jefferson  Davis  desired ; 
and  two  years  had  not  passed  before  they  were 
planning  a  Panama  canal,  an  expanding  commerce 


*A    fair   illustration   is   the  letter   of   Edward   Everett, 
Jameson,   Corresp.   1080-81. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUK  157 

with  the  Orient,  and  talking  of  the  absorption  of 
the  ill-governed  land  of  the  Montezumas — "an 
ocean-bound  republic"  was  their  cry.  It  was  the 
swelling  ambition  of  the  lower  South  which  Polk 
allowed  to  prevail  and  which  men  like  Lewis  Cass 
and  Senator  Allen  of  Ohio  were  only  too  glad  to 
encourage  in  the  hope  that  they  might  succeed  to 
the  post  which  was  to  be  denied  Calhoun. 

After  a  year  of  war,  the  administration  became 
uneasy  about  compelling  Mexico  to  cede  New 
Mexico  and  California  in  time  to  face  the  next 
general  election  with  the  best  of  all  arguments, 
success,  and  the  military  committee  of  the  Senate 
headed  by  Cass  brought  in  the  plan  which  became 
known  to  the  country  as  the  "Ten  Regiments" 
bill.  Cass  asked  for  ten  thousand  regulars  and 
thirty  millions  of  dollars  with  which  to  accom 
plish  the  task.  The  growing  purpose  of  Robert 
J.  Walker,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Jefferson 
Davis  and  others,  was  to  take  over  all  Mexico,1 
though  this  was  not  openly  declared  in  the  Senate 
discussions.  Viewing  the  whole  Southern  pro 
gram  now  with  alarm,  Calhoun  threw  the  weight 

1  Bourne,   E.    G.,   American  Historical  Review,  V,   491. 


158  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

of  his  influence  against  the  scheme  and  defeated 
it.  The  Southern  imperialists  could  not  under 
stand  him ;  they  were  angry,  but  could  not  safely 
show  it.  Was  not  the  South  to  be  the  chief  bene 
ficiary  of  annexation  and  was  not  Calhoun  the 
very  incarnation  of  Southern  purpose  and  ambi 
tion?  Calhoun  had  been  courted  by  the  Presi 
dent,1  urged  by  the  war  party  and  stimulated  by 
the  promise  of  support  for  his  campaign  for  the 
Democratic  nomination  in  1848.  It  availed  noth 
ing;  he  not  only  spoke  against  the  measure  but 
called  attention  of  the  country  to  the  danger 
ous  policy2  of  the  Polk  administration. 

While  his  slender  chances  for  the  nomination 
had  been  thus  thrown  away  during  the  sessions 
of  1845-46  and  1846-47,  the  Wilmot  proviso,  a 
"rider"  attached  to  the  Two  Million  bill  of  1846, 
forever  forbidding  slavery  in  the  territory  about 
to  be  acquired  from  Mexico,  became  the  burning 
issue.  Wilmot  was  a  weak  unimportant  member 
of  the  House,  but  he  presented  a  test  question 
which  set  the  groups  in  the  Democratic  party  by 

*The  Polk  Diary,  II,  282— on. 

a  Works,  IV,  303-327,  for  speech  in  full. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  159 

the  ears  in  a  way  which  augured  ill  for  both  the 
dominant  party  and  for  the  country.  Cass,  who 
was  playing  fast  and  loose  for  the  succession  and 
who  had  the  best  claims  on  the  imperialist  wing 
of  his  party,  at  first  supported  the  proviso  which 
he  later  pronounced  unconstitutional ;  Benton  who 
felt  that  the  whole  Texas-Oregon  policy  was  his 
"thunder"  and  that  it  had  been  stolen  by  the 
Southerners  at  Baltimore,  was  disposed  to  favor 
the  idea  if  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  injure 
Calhoun  whose  schemes  for  the  support  of  the 
Northwest  were  already  giving  him  trouble  in 
Missouri;  the  President  thought  the  move  only 
the  blunder  of  an  innocent  member  of  congress, 
whom  he  sent  for  and  persuaded  to  recede  from 
his  position.1  But  to  Calhoun  it  was  a  challenge 
which  he  took  up  at  once  and  which  threw  him 
and  all  his  followers  into  hysteria.  He  watched 
the  moves  of  the  "Wilmot  men"  and  the  grow 
ing  favor  they  received  in  the  Northwest  during 
the  session  of  congress  which  closed  in  March, 
1847.  And  when  he  returned  to  South  Carolina 
he  was  greeted  by  an  immense  throng  of  people 
1  Folk's  Diary,  II,  289. 


160  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

who  regarded  the  Wilmot  restriction  as  a  declara 
tion  of  war  against  slavery  and  the  South.  In 
an  address  which  he  delivered  in  Charleston  on 
/  March  9,  1847,*  ne  returned  to  his  radical  partic 
ularism  of  1832.  Any  interference  with  slavery 
in  any  of  the  territories  should  be  prohibited  by 
congress  whose  business  it  was  to  protect  prop 
erty,  and  negro  slaves  were  nothing  else.  If 
congress  refused  the  protection  which  the  Consti 
tution  promised,  the  South  must  defend  herself. 
This  is  in  brief  the  idea  which  went  out  to  the 
country  from  Charleston.  Southern  papers  re 
printed  his  words  as  coming  from  a  seer;  both 
Whig  and  Democratic  journals  vied  with  each 
other  in  the  race  to  radicalism  on  this  subject — 
a  radicalism  on  behalf  of  property  rights,  a  reac 
tion  from  those  nobler  ideas  of  the  South  which 
had  given  Jefferson  his  fame  and  which  in  a  way 
animated  Jackson.  Virginia  declared  in  her  leg 
islature  of  the  ensuing  autumn  that  she  would  go 
to  war  rather  than  see  the  Wilmot  proviso  become 
law.  The  people  of  Mississippi  assembled  in 
mass  meetings,  and  regardless  of  party  align- 

1  Jameson,  Corresp.,  719;  Works  IV,  382. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  161 

ments,  took  steps  toward  secession.  South  Caro 
lina,  under  the  same  leadership  which  had  pro 
duced  the  nullification  movement  fifteen  years 
before,  rode  upon  the  crest  of  the  new  storm. 
Thus  far  was  loyalty  to  property  ideals  carrying 
a  noble  people  and  one  of  the  ablest  leaders  the 
nation  has  ever  produced.  Calhoun,  the  nation 
alist,  who  had  less  than  two  years  before  planned 
at  Memphis  with  the  Chicago  business  men  and 
the  northwestern  politicians  a  movement  like 
that  which  had  made  him  a  great  figure  in  1816, 
was  now  falling  back  behind  his  second  line  of 
defense — slavery  and  the  monopoly  rights  which 
its  protagonists  enjoyed.  From  1847  to  the  day 
of  his  death  in  1850,  he  strove  as  he  had  never 
striven  before  to  unite  the  people  of  the  South 
on  the  one  issue  upon  which  unity  was  ominous. 
The  treaty  with  Mexico  which  fixed  the  status 
in  the  union  of  California,  New  Mexico,  and 
Texas,  was  a  sort  of  title  deed  which  Polk  labored 
so  long  and  faithfully  to  present  to  the  country  at 
the  close  of  his  administration.  The  country 
accepted  the  gift  with  thanks  but  repudiated  the 
giver.  Neither  Polk  nor  any  other  member  of 
ii 


162  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

his  party  possessed  the  confidence  of  the  nation  in 
a  sufficient  degree  to  secure  the  presidency.  Cal- 
houn,  who  had  warned  the  imperialists,  had  now 
no  hope  for  high  promotion,  and  he  gave  all  his 
strength  to  the  task  of  winning  and  holding  the 
new  areas  for  the  South  and  for  slavery  although 
he  had  confessed  to  Polk  in  I8461  that  slavery 
could  never  be  maintained  in  the  new  region. 
What  he  contended  for  was  the  shadow  of  a  vic 
tory  just  as  the  Wilmot  proviso  men  were  doing, 
both  parties  acknowledging  that  it  was  a  victory, 
not  practical  results,  which  they  had  in  view,  a 
fact  which  Webster  might  have  offered  in  justi 
fication  of  his  famous  debacle  of  March  7,  1850. 

It  was  to  Calhoun  a  most  painful  situation,  but 
one  for  which  he  was  more  responsible  than  any 
other  man.  He  marshalled  his  forces  for  the 
conflict  like  the  great  general  he  was.  Jefferson 
Davis  and  James  M.  Mason  were  his  lieutenants 
in  the  Senate  while  Robert  Barnwell  Rhett  and 
William  Lowndes  Yancey  surpassed  themselves 
in  arousing  the  South  to  the  dangers  which 
seemed  to  threaten  the  two  billions  of  dollars 

1  Folk's  Diary,  11,283-84. 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  163 

worth  of  negro  property  scattered  all  the  way 
from  Pennsylvania  to  the  Rio  Grande.  It  is  not 
worth  while  to  describe  here  the  scenes  which  have 
been  depicted  so  often:  how  the  South  was  as 
sembling  in  a  sort  of  second  Hartford  convention 
at  Nashville,  how  the  leading  Southern  senators 
and  representatives  held  meetings  and  caucuses 
from  day  to  day,  how  Calhoun  warned  the  South 
ern  people  in  a  formal  address1  that  their  dearest 
rights  were  at  stake.  It  was  an  exciting  time,  ^ 
calling  for  the  coolest  heads;  Calhoun  was  al 
ready  in  his  sixty-eighth  year  and  possessed  now, 
as  always,  of  a  cool  head  and  calculating  mind. 
Still  he  led  the  revolt.  Calhoun,  unlike  most 
other  men,  was  as  "high  strung,"  as  ambi 
tious  and  as  keen  a  debater  the  last  year  of  his 
life  as  when  he  first  entered  congress.  But  it 
was  the  South,  not  the  young  and  struggling  na 
tion  of  1811  for  which  he  strove  so  manfully  and 
sadly  in  1850.  He  did  not  live  to  see  the  sur 
render  of  his  followers  to  the  genius  of  his  life 
long  rival,  Clay,  who  had  come  back  to  congress 
to  wrestle  with  him. 
1  Works.  VI  285-312. 


164  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

When  Calhoun  died,  March  31,  1850,  literally 
at  his  post  in  Washington,  there  was  little  sign 
that  Southern  men,  like  Foote  of  Mississippi, 
would  "go  over"  to  Clay  or  that  the  sunshine  of 
the  great  orator's  diffusive  personality  would  dis 
solve  the  bellicose  Southern  convention ;  and  well 
might  one  say  of  Calhoun  as  of  Washington,  he 
died  at  the  right  time,  being  spared  the  bitter  cup 
preparing  for  him,  though  it  required  the  death 
of  a  younger  and  more  vigorous  man  than  Cal 
houn,  none  less  than  President  Taylor  himself, 
to  secure  the  desired  end,  the  third  and  last  great 
compromise  of  the  Kentucky  statesman.  ^ 

It  was  a  black  day  for  the  people  of  the  Pal 
metto  state  that  brought  the  news  of  Calhoun's 
death.  Men  put  on  the  signs  of  mourning  and 
women  wept  as  they  went  about  their  domestic 
duties.  "The  great  Calhoun  is  dead"  was  the  low 
murmur  which  passed  from  house  to  house  and 
town  to  town  throughout  the  devoted  little  state. 
Merchant  princes  of  Charleston,  plantation  mas 
ters  of  the  cotton  belt,  simple  farmers  from  the  up- 
country  wore  the  badge  of  genuine  grief.  So  long 
had  the  dead  senator  lived  and  moved  among  his 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  165 

people,  so  long  had  they  looked  to  him  as  a  divine 
oracle  in  times  of  stress  that  men  knew  not  what 
to  do  now  that  he  was  gone.     Calhoun  was  the 
state  of  South  Carolina  and  the  state  of  South 
Carolina  was  quite  as  sacred  to  its  people  as  was 
ever  Stuart  or  Bourbon  prince  to  his  followers.    - 
For  a  whole  month  the  remains  of  the  departed 
statesman  were  kept  above  ground  in  order  that 
the  living  might  have  a  chance  to  show  their  re 
spect,  and  when  the  tomb  claimed  its  own,  the 
people  still  lingered  about  the  sacred  spot  like 
those   who   mourn   their  departed   mates.     And   > 
when  the  war  came  ten  years  later  his  remains 
were  brought  to   Charleston  and  kept  under  a 
guard  of  two  companies  of  South  Carolina  troops 
lest  by  some  chance  the  hostile  North  should  get 
opportunity    to    wreak   its    vengeance  upon   his 
mouldering  frame.     Calhoun  still  lived;  and  he 
lives    to-day    in   a   sense   that    no   other    Amer-  y 
ican  leader  lives.     His  memory  is  worshiped  by 
tens  of  thousands ;  even  the  poor  negroes  sing  his 
praises  and  tell  stories  of  his  unmatched  greatness.  I 

It  was  not  Jefferson's  lot  to  embody  either  dur 
ing  his  life  or  after  his  death  the  thought  and 


i66  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

feelings  of  a  whole  state  or  any  considerable  part 
of  the  nation;  the  "Sage  of  Monticello"  was  ever 
a  partisan  and  men  of  wealth  even  in  the  capi 
tal  of  the  Old  Dominion,  revile  both  his  name 
and  his  teachings  to  this  day.     Men  remember 
Jefferson's  ideas  and  ideals,  not  his  personality, 
and  they  still  contend  for  and  dispute  about  them. 
>No  man  doubts  what  Calhoun  stood  for;  and  the 
people  of  the  South  know  well  that  it  was  he  who 
/prepared  the  way  for  secession  and  war.     The 
^author  has  heard  small  cotton  farmers  declaim 
how  the  South  would  have  won  but  for  his  death 
ten  years  before  the  war. 

He  had  begun,  the  son  of  a  small  planter,  whose 

/• 

father  had  been  an  anti-slavery  man,  had  become 
a  slaveholder  through  no  fault  of  his  own,  mar 
ried  a  lady  of  the  aristocratic  regime  in  Charles 
ton  and  turned  his  attention  to  national  politics. 
He  became  at  once  an  ardent  nationalist,  impelled 
onward  by  the  sectionalism  of  New  England,  and 
was  one  of  the  great  figures  of  that  period  of 
reconstruction  which  followed  the  second  war 
with  England.  Compelled  by  the  injustice  and 
bad  faith  of  a  personal  and  despotic  party  leader, 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN  167 

he  turned  his  matchless  genius  to  the  invention  of 
a  doctrine  which  should  reconcile  nationality  with 
particularism,  and  became  at  once  the  champion 
of  slavery  and  cotton,  the  money  interests  of  the 
South.  From  1833  to  T^5O  ne  taught  the  South 
that  property  in  negro  slaves  was  more  sacred 
than  the  rights  and  ideas  so  eloquently  defended 
by  his  own  great  teacher,  Jefferson.  He  died, 
the  greatest  reactionary  of  his  time. 

War  was  to  be  the  next  stage  in  the  evolution, 
and  Jefferson  Davis  was  to  complete  the  work  of 
Calhoun  and  convert  the  old  and  radical  democ 
racy  of  Jefferson  into  armies  contending  upon 
the  field  of  battle  for  ideals  and  purposes  abso 
lutely  foreign  to  the  mind  of  the  great  founder. 


FROM  RADICALISM  TO 

CONSERVATIVE 

REVOLT 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS 


^v^w^*  *Nt 

^O  speak  kindly  of  Jefferson  Davis,  even  a.I 
half-century    after    the    events    which   he; 
helped  to  bring  about,  is  an  exceedingly! 
risky  thing.     Somehow   or  other,    mankind   re-'  \ 
quires  scapegoats;  somebody  must  be  punished 
for  the  mistakes  of  the  race  or  the  nation,  and  no 
better  way  has  been  found  than  to  pick  out  some 
conspicuous     individual,     usually     innocent    and 
sometimes  even  harmless,  and  lay  upon  him  the 
burden  of  shame  and  guilt  for  great  calamities 
which  have  come  as  a  result  of  the  general  sin 
ning.     I  shall  not  here  and  now  enter  upon  a 
defense  of  this  system  nor  even  of  the  innocent 
victims  of  it  in  history,  but  only  remark  that  we 
have  adopted  the  system  in  America,  that  we  like 
it  and  that  there  is  no  telling  when  some  of  us 
171 


172  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

may  be  pounced  upon  by  our  community  or  our 
country  as  a  scapegoat.  Jefferson  Davis  was  a 
scapegoat  and  he  bore  upon  himself  the  marks  of 
the  general  disapproval  until  he  was  laid  to  rest 
in  his  tomb  in  romantic  Hollywood  cemetery  on 
the  banks  of  the  James.  Keeping  this  idea  in 
mind  I  think  we  may  profitably  study  the  re 
markable  career  of  the  man  who  headed  the  great 
est  revolt  in  human  history  and  whose  work  came 
nearer  to  success  than  that  of  any  other  who 
finally  failed. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  like  Lincoln,  born  on  the 
Kentucky  frontier — in  the  Green  river  valley, 
whence  his  parents  had  gone  from  Georgia  in 
search  of  a  better  station  in  life  and  some  lands 
for  their  tribe  of  children.  Pioneers,  especially 
Kentucky  pioneers,  seem  to  have  won  the  special 
approval  of  Providence  if  Providence  approves  of 
large  families.  Henry  Clay's  mother  gave  seven 
teen  sons  and  daughters  to  old  Kentucky — there 
was  a  clan  of  Clays;  Chief  Justice  Marshall's 
father  carried  thirteen  children  to  his  new  home 
in  the  West  and  Samuel  Davis,  though  not  blessed 
so  frequently,  was  the  father  of  nine  sons  and 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  173 

daughters,  of  whom  Jefferson  was  the  youngest. 

With  so  great  a  household  it  was  a  problem  in 
deed  for  the  Davises  to  find  sustenance,  and  the 
father  like  Lincoln's  father  was  restless.  He 
did  not  remain  a  long  time  in  Kentucky;  but  on 
hearing  of  the  great  wealth  to  be  made  in  the 
new  cotton  planting  industry,  embarked  his 
household  goods  upon  the  Mississippi  in  1810, 
two  years  after  young  Jefferson's  advent  into  the 
world,  and  took  up  lands  in  the  new  Louisiana 
territory.  Discontented  still,  he  moved  next  year 
to  the  southwestern  border  of  Mississippi  where 
he  found  lands  and  conditions  to  suit  his  needs 
about  fifty  miles  from  the  then  thriving  town  of 
Natchez. 

The  Davises,  it  will  be  noticed,  were,  like  the 
Jeffersons  and  the  Calhouns,  borderers — men  who 
live  and  bring  up  their  families  on  the  outskirts 
of  civilization  and  who  accustom  themselves  to 
the  absence  of  most  of  those  accessories  of  life 
which  most  of  us  regard  as  essential.  There 
was  not  much  comfort  in  the  home  of  young 
Thomas  Jefferson  and  he  saw  a  rough  life  of  it, 
with  Indians  taking  scalps  now  and  then  in  his 


174  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

neighborhood;  as  we  have  seen,  John  Calhoun 
knew  what  it  meant  to  lose  his  nearest  of  kin  by 
Indian  warfare;  and  young  Jefferson  Davis  was 
hardly  out  of  his  cradle  before  Calhoun's  war 
of  1812  turned  loose  the  southern  Indians  to 
wreak  their  vengeance  upon  the  innocent  and  the 
guilty  alike. 

There  was  another  similarity  in  the  situation 
of  Davis  to  that  of  Calhoun  and  Jefferson — he 
was  a  child  of  the  new  West  of  his  day.  The 
first  counties  established  in  Mississippi  were 
Wilkinson,  Amite  and  Adams — names  which 
young  Davis  first  learned  to  pronounce.  Not 
only  on  the  border,  but  as  an  exponent  of  a  new 
West,  he  came  to  man's  estate  and  to  leadership 
in  the  affairs  of  the  South.  The  Davis  family 
was  "Hardshell"  Baptist  as  the  ugly  term  now 
goes — proof  enough  that  he  was  "rocked"  in  the 
same  kind  of  a  cradle  that  "rocked"  young  Lin 
coln  whose  father  had  taken  him  off  to  the  border 
forests  of  Indiana  and  Illinois.  The  local  school 
master  in  Davis'  neighborhood  was  one  Shaw, 
who  gathered  the  boys  of  the  community  into  a 
little  log  schoolhouse  to  teach  them  the  mysteries 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  175 

of  the  three  R's.  But  as  fate  will  have  it,  the 
teacher  was  an  uncommon  good  one,  an  emigre 
from  Boston,  like  Jefferson's  and  Calhoun's 
teachers,  representatives  of  learning  in  a  far 
country  doing  missionary  work — great  work  as 
their  pupils'  lives  made  fully  evident  in  the  days 
to  come. 

But  Jefferson's  West  grew  strong  in  opposing 
the  royal  governors  of  Virginia;  Calhoun's  in 
fighting  the  Federalist  reaction  and  the  Charleston 
clique;  while  the  West  of  Jefferson  Davis  was  a 
cotton  growing  section  which  looked  upon  the 
federal  government,  like  the  protectionists  of  the 
East,  as  an  agency  whose  primary  business  it  was 
to  foster  and  protect  industry.  Human  rights 
as  such,  theories  of  government  and  the  growth 
of  a  great  homogeneous  nationality  such  as  Jeffer 
son  and  Calhoun  struggled  to  attain,  were  far 
from  the  minds  of  these  pioneers  of  the  lower 
South.  Still  it  was  a  wholesome,  democratic 
community  aside  from  the  one  great  interest — 
cotton  planting  and  slavery,  its  concomitant. 

When  young  Davis  was  ready  for  college,  he 
was  sent  to  the  so-called  Athens  of  the  West, 


176  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Lexington,  Kentucky,  where  a  Connecticut 
teacher  had  built  one  of  the  greatest  colleges  in  the 
country,  judged  by  the  number  of  students  present 
and  the  variety  of  subjects  offered.  Transylvania 
University  was  indeed  a  great  institution  when 
Holley  was  at  its  head  and  when  Speaker  Henry 
Clay  was  its  patron.  Ambitious  students  from 
all  the  states  and  territories  west  of  the  Allegha- 
nies  flocked  there  to  procure  the  necessary  training 
for  public  careers.  Jefferson  advised  young 
Virginians  to  repair  to  the  Kentucky  fountain  of 
learning  as  the  source  of  true  republicanism.  In 
support  of  the  college  Lexington  established  the 
first  public  library  in  the  West  and  both  town 
and  state  boasted  of  "the  University"  in  a  way 
that  should  have  compelled  a  greater  success  than 
has  since  been  accorded  to  it.  Latin  and  Greek 
and  Mathematics  were  the  three  R's  of  Davis' 
collegiate  training  and  he  pursued  them  with  a 
fair  degree  of  diligence  considering  his  strong 
bent  for  other  things.  Davis  was  not  the  boy  to 
break  down  his  health  with  hard  study  as  Calhoun 
had  been  nor  to  "push"  himself  like  Jefferson  into 
the  society  of  his  teachers  in  order  to  listen  to 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  177 

their  "sweet  discourse  of  books."  Davis  did  not 
"graduate,"  as  Americans  insist  upon  saying 
when  a  young  man  completes  his  four  years' 
course  at  college.  He  liked  to  tease  his  profess 
ors  and  play  pranks  upon  the  unoffending,  if 
somewhat  inviting,  citizens  of  the  town  and  he 
enjoyed  living  and  breathing  the  fresh  outdoor, 
Kentucky  atmosphere,  all  of  which  was  contrary 
to  the  law  of  the  place  and  the  wishes  of  his 
superiors — traits  which  college  boys  elsewhere 
have  sometimes  developed. 

From  Transylvania  Davis  was  sent  to  West 
Point  where  he  met  Robert  E.  Lee  and  Albert 
Sidney  Johnston,  men  who  became  famous  co- 
workers  of  his  in  the  great  struggle  for  Southern 
independence.  At  the  National  Military  Academy 
he  received  the  training  which  he  most  desired 
and  though  he  did  not  win  a  high  stand  in  his 
class,  he  seems  to  have  imbibed  the  spirit  of  the 
place  as  thoroughly  as  any  who  ever  entered  upon 
its  courses.  Davis  was  all  his  life  a  "military 
man"  with  the  military  air  and  some  of  the  class  •/• 
consciousness  which  many  other  West  Pointers 
have  shown  in  abundance.  The  simple  demo- 

12 


1 78  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

cratic  boy  who  "went  off  to  college"  in  1821 
came  home  in  1828  "every  inch"  an  aristocrat, 
which  was  probably  what  Joseph  Davis,  the  oldest 
brother,  and  head  of  the  family  since  the  father's 
death  in  1828,  desired,  for  the  fortunes  of  the 
Davises  had  greatly  improved.  Joseph  Davis 
was  fast  becoming  a  millionaire  and  a  great 
planter  who  felt  a  keen  interest  in  the  young 
army  officer  whose  fortune  already  promised  so 
much. 

The  five  or  six  years  which  young  Davis  now 
spent  on  the  northwestern  frontier  did  not  ma 
terially  change  his  views  of  life  or  his  already 
fixed  character.  His  marriage  to  the  daughter 
of  Colonel  Zachary  Taylor  at  the  close  of  his  army 
service  in  1835  was  more  important  in  drawing 
out  the  character  of  the  man  than  in  seriously 
affecting  his  destiny.  It  was  clandestine.  The 
Taylor  homestead  was  then  on  the  Ohio  near 
Louisville,  Kentucky;  but  Taylor  and  his  daugh 
ter  lived  at  old  Fort  Crawford  in  southwestern 
Wisconsin.  In  order  to  get  rid  of  an  ambitious 
suitor  for  the  hand  of  the  young  lady,  Taylor  sent 
the  young  lieutenant  to  Fort  Gibson  in  Arkansas, 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  179 

some  four  hundred  miles  away.  As  usual  locks 
and  keys  proved  of  no  avail  against  the  desires 
of  the  young  lovers.  Miss  Taylor  made  a  visit 
to  her  father's  sister  who  lived  in  a  small  frame 
house  on  the  banks  of  the  Ohio  about  five  miles 
from  the  older  Taylor  estate.  Davis  visited  the  x 
place  at  the  same  time,  despite  the  distance 
of  nearly  a  thousand  miles  and  carried  off  the 
prize  to  his  brother's  great  plantation,  Hurricane, 
on  the  Mississippi,  a  little  below  Vicksburg. 

Here  in  the  year  1835  Davis  began  the  career 
of  a  cotton  planter,  so  profitable  in  the  thirties 
and  fifties  of  the  last  century.  He  bought  ne 
groes  "on  credit,"  and  built  a  small  plantation 
house  on  the  land  which  his  brother  gave  him  as 
his  part  of  the  deceased  father's  estate.  Working* 
with  his  own  hands  among  his  negroes  in  the 
cotton  fields  was  in  his  case,  as  in  Calhoun's,  not 
inconsistent  with  the  ideals  of  the  Southern 
people,  though  the  great  planters  were  seldom  seen 
on  their  plantations  except  on  horseback,  giving 
orders  to  overseers.  In  a  few  months  both  Davis 
and  his  wife  were  stricken  by  the  fever  whicH 
attacks  the  unacclimated  in  the  hot  delta  region. 


i8o  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

The  young  wife  died,  but  the  husband  slowly  re 
covered,  not  regaining  his  strength  until  a  year 
later.  Davis  never  enjoyed  vigorous  health  after 
the  terrible  experiences  of  his  service  as  an  army 
officer  in  the  northwest  corner  of  Wisconsin  in 
1828-30,  and  neither  as  a  planter  nor  as  United 
States  senator  nor  yet  as  president  of  the  Con 
federacy  did  he  ever  for  any  considerable  period 
count  hijnself  a  "well'*  man.  He  often  arose 
from  a  sick  bed  to  make  his  speeches  in  the 
Senate;  the  orders  for  the  assembling  of  the  Con 
federate  troops  at  Manassas  in  1861  were  issued 
while  he  lay  prostrate  in  his  private  chamber,  and 
when  he  retired  to  Mississippi  after  two  years' 
imprisonment  he  was  of  course  a  "physical 
wreck,"  though  the  spirit  of  the  man  was  still 
equal  to  many  a  storm.  Jefferson  Davis  is  a  per 
fect  example  of  what  a  resolute  will  can  endure 
and  accomplish  in  spite  of  the  most  depressing 
and  incurable  of  maladies. 

Eight  years,  beginning  with  1837,  were  next 
spent  on  the  plantation  at  Davis  Bend,  Warren 
county,  Mississippi,  and  aside  from  the  work  of 
the  plantation  Davis  read  history,  both  ancient 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  181 

and  contemporary,  as  few  Southerners  of  his  day 
were  doing  and  when  he  emerged  in  1843  as  a 
candidate  for  election  to  the  state  legislature  as  a 
Democrat  from  a  Whig  constituency,  he  was 
ready  even  for  the  debate  with  the  great  orator 
Sergeant  Prentiss,  which  was  forced  upon  him. 
It  was  a  better  discussion,  we  are  told,  than  that 
which  occurred  in  Virginia  between  young  John, 
Randolph  and  the  aged  Patrick  Henry  in  1798. 
The  debate  and  the  candidacy  made  one  thing 
clear  if  nothing  else,  that  the  future  Confederate 
chieftain  never  defended  but  opposed  the  then 
widely  discussed  policy  of  repudiation  advocated 
by  his  party.  But  Davis  was  defeated  in  his  first 
ambition,  though  the  reputation  which  he  won 
pointed  him  out  to  the  "boss"  of  the  state,  Robert 
J.  Walker,  as  presidential  elector  in  1844,  when 
the  slender,  angular  form  of  Jefferson  Davis  first 
became  known  to  the  people  of  every  county  in 
Mississippi.  He  had  the  satisfaction  of  voting 
for  the  successful  candidate  of  that  momentous 
campaign  and  a  year  later  he  was  sent  on  to  con 
gress  "to  win  his  spurs"  in  national  politics,  i.e., 
in  December,  1845,  tne  vear  when  Calhoun,  his 


182  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

great  mentor,  was  planning  his  last  hopeless  cam 
paign  for  the  presidency. 

Davis  was  already  known  as  a  follower  of  Cal- 
houn  in  much  the  same  way  that  Calhoun  had  been 
counted  a  disciple  of  Jefferson  in  1810;  but  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other  there  was  too  much  inde 
pendence  for  either  simply  to  tread  "beaten 
paths."  Davis  was  essentially  an  aristocrat ;  Cal 
houn  had  been  a  democrat  as  was  Jefferson  before 
him,  though  both  the  Virginian  and  the  Carolina 
leader  were  aristocrats  in  personal  tastes  and  feel 
ings.  Davis,  though  a  Democrat  in  politics,  was 
a  representative  of  the  "interests"  of  the  lower 
South ;  Jefferson  had  been  in  1 776,  and  always 
remained,  an  enemy  of  the  "interests"  both  in 
Virginia  and  in  the  nation;  thus  we  see  the 
metamorphosis  of  the  old  Republican  party  in  the 
positions  of  its  representative  men.  But  Davis 
was  not  yet  the  Voice  of  the  lower  South  or  of  his 
state. 

Mississippi  was  in  1844  the  aggressive  South 
ern  state;  it  was  the  South  Carolina  of  1812. 
The  leaders  of  Mississippi  when  Davis  entered 
public  life  had  just  displaced  the  Tennessee  group 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  183 

which  had  but  recently  passed  its  zenith,  though 
the  Mississippians  picked  a  Tennesseean  for 
president.  No  wiser  politician  ever  had  a  seat 
in  the  United  States  Senate  than  Robert  J.  Walker 
of  Pennsylvania-Mississippi,  senator  since  1836, 
master  planner  of  the  Baltimore  Democratic 
convention  which  "slaughtered"  Van  Buren 
and  showed  Calhoun  how  futile  had  been  all 
his  efforts  to  attain  the  nomination  for  the 
presidency  and  who  at  the  right  time  intro 
duced  Polk  and  carried  off  the  honors.  No 
better  piece  of  "wire-pulling"  was  ever  done  by 
the  late  Mark  Hanna  than  that  which  culminated 
in  the  nomination  of  Polk  and  Dallas — the  one  a 
low  tariff  man  to  please  Calhoun,  the  other  a 
protectionist  to  win  Pennsylvania  and,  in  order 
to  hold  the  Northwest  to  the  lower  South,  "fifty- 
four  forty  or  fight"  (for  Oregon)  was  added,  in 
the  platform,  to  the  Mississippi  slogan,  the  "rean- 
nexation  of  Texas."  What  proved  the  wisdom 
of  Walker  was  the  election  which  showed  every 
Southern  state  but  three,  North  Carolina,  Ten 
nessee  and  Kentucky,  and  every  Northwestern 
state  but  one,  Ohio,  "solid"  for  Polk  and  Dallas. 


184  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

What  Calhoun  had  planned  for  all  his  life  and 
failed  to  accomplish  was  thus  won  by  the  Missis 
sippi  senator  in  a  campaign  of  less  than  a  year! 
Y  The  South  and  the  West  had  united  fortunes  once 
more  as  in  1800  and  in  1828. 

Walker's  co-workers  in  Mississippi  were  John 
A.  Quitman,  a  New  Yorker,  Jacob  Thompson,  a 
North  Carolinian,  Alexander  G.  Brown,  a  South 
Carolinian,  Henry  S.  Foote,  a  Virginian,  and 
Jefferson  Davis,  a  Kentuckian.  None  of  these 
men  were  planters  native  to  Mississippi,  some 
were  former  Jackson  men,  some  ardent  supporters 
of  Calhoun,  but  all  had  done  men's  work  and 
more  in  electing  Polk.  What  they  asked  for  in 
national  politics  was  what  they  obtained,  the 
annexation  of  Texas.  What  was  to  come  after — 
war  with  Mexico,  expansion  to  the  Pacific  and  a 
new  crisis  about  slavery — was  not  a  matter  that 
gave  them  any  great  concern.  The  rapid  rise  in 
the  value  of  negro  property,  like  stocks  on  Wall 
street  when  new  regions  of  exploitation  offer, 
was  a  perfectly  natural  consequence  of  the  Missis 
sippi  policies.  The  annexation  of  Louisiana  had 
produced  a  similar  result  in  1803;  and  in  1855 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  185 

Henry  A.   [Wise,  of  Virginia,   declared  to   his 
people  that  the  making  of  Kansas  a  slave  state    v- 
would  "raise  the  price  of  your  negroes"  a  hun 
dred  per  cent. 

Walker  became  Folk's  secretary  of  treasury 
and  dominated  to  a  large  degree  the  whole 
administration;  John  A.  Quitman  and  Jefferson 
Davis  became  brigadier-generals  in  the  Mexican 
war;  A.  G.  Brown  was  governor  of  Mississippi; 
Jacob  Thompson  remained  in  the  House;  and 
Henry  S.  Foote  went  to  the  United  States  Senate. 
Was  ever  a  small  group  of  leaders — all  living  in 
a  small  and  new  state — more  successful  or  more 
influential  ? 

Davis  was  the  youngest  member  of  the  Missis 
sippi  coterie.  Walker  was  its  master  and  mouth 
piece.  A  small  wizen-faced,  stooping  figure,  unat 
tractive  and  unprepossessing  to  a  high  degree,  he 
was,  nevertheless,  the  architect  of  the  democratic  .s' 
imperialism  under  which  Texas  was  annexed,  and 
New  Mexico  and  California  were  taken  as  a  rec 
ompense  for  not  taking  Texas  earlier.  The  only 
difference  between  Walker's  view  and  the  policy  of 
the  federal  government  as  it  was  finally  carried  out 


1 86  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

was  that  he  demanded  all  Mexico  to  save  future 

troubles  and  excuses  about  Panama  and  the  canal. 
V 

Davis  was  heart  and  soul  with  his  Mississippi 

patron  and  when  he  came  back  from  Mexico  with 
the  honors  of  Buena  Vista  "thick  upon  him/'  Gov 
ernor  Brown  appointed  him  to  the  then  vacant 
seat  for  Mississippi  in  the  United  States  Senate. 
"General"  Davis,  young  though  he  was  and  a 
new  member  of  the  "most  august  legislative  body 
on  earth,"  took  rank  at  once  with  the  first  in  the 
land.  Calhoun  had  come  back  to  "die  in  the  last 
ditch;"  Webster  was  there,  too;  and  Benton  and 
Lewis  Cass,  the  latter  soon  to  be  the  defeated 
candidate  of  his  party  for  the  presidency,  were 
leaders.  Placed  on  the  committee  on  military 
affairs,  of  which  Cass  was  chairman,  Davis  had 
opportunity  to  work  out  a  policy  for  himself,  his 
committee,  and  the  country,  for  this  was  just  then 
the  most  important  committee  in  congress.  The 
plan  was  simple:  send  forward  to  the  scene  of 
war  ten  new  regiments  of  regular  troops,  well 
supported  by  the  militia  forces  already  in  the 
service,  hold  all  Mexico  and  never  give  up  the 
southern  part  of  the  country  if  any.  The  coun- 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  187 

try  is  ours  by  right  of  conquest — a  right  which 
few  nations  will  dare  dispute.  The  obliteration 
of  Mexico  or  its  restoration  was  a  matter  for  Con 
gress  to  decide,  not  for  the  newspapers,  least  of 
all  for  the  Mexicans  who  had  appealed  to  the  last 
argument  of  nations  and  had  lost. 

Though  an  ardent  admirer  of  Calhoun,  Davis 
had  no  patience  with  his  program,  which  was  the 
one  finally  adopted;  viz.,  the  restoration  of  Mex 
ico  and  the  cession  to  the  United  States  of  New 
Mexico  and  California.  The  older  man,  foresee 
ing  what  an  awful  struggle  would  ensue  over  the  . 
question  of  slavery  in  the  proposed  enormous 
accessions,  preferred  the  more  moderate  course; 
the  younger  flushed  with  victory  and  just  begin 
ning  his  career  as  a  national  leader,  was  willing 
to  take  the  risk  and  appeal  to  the  country  to  re 
turn  the  party  to  power  in  1848.  It  need  not  be 
said  that  the  Calhoun  policy  was  the  wiser  both: 
for  the  nation  and  for  the  lower  South,  then 
dominant  in  the  nation. 

The  people  in  the  election  which  followed  repu 
diated  the  party  which  had  settled  the  Texas  and 
Oregon  questions  and  annexed  territory  sufficient 


i88  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

to  make  a  dozen  states.  They  went  further  and 
indicated,  though  not  very  clearly,  that  they  did 
not  intend  that  slavery  should  be  extended  over 
the  new  territories.  The  South,  which  four  years 
before  had  won  a  great  triumph  and  apparently 
consummated  the  alliance  with  the  West,  was 
now  threatened  with  the  loss  of  the  reins  of 
government  and  of  all  the  benefits  of  the  recent 
war.  The  only  consoling  feature  of  the  late 
campaign  was  that  the  president-elect  was  a  great 
slaveholder  and  might  in  the  end  be  relied  on  to 
see  that  no  harm  befell  "the  institution."  From 
Davis's  point  of  view  the  failure  of  the  South  to 
support  Cass  was  fatal,  though  Taylor  was,  it 
will  be  recalled,  the  father  of  his  first  wife  and 
his  commander  at  Buena  Vista.  His  idea  was 
that  the  West  which  was  "solid"  for  Cass  should 
be  solidly  supported  by  the  South  and  that  the 
alliance  of  the  two  sections  would  not  only  guar 
antee  the  country  against  the  dangers  of  the 
abolitionists  but  secure  the  interests  of  the  South. 
Cass  was  not  unwilling  that  slavery  should  go 
into  the  territories,  in  fact,  after  some  wavering, 
he  was  able  to  find  a  constitutional  mandate  in 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  189 

favor  of  slavery  in  the  disputed  region.  Davis 
made  speeches  in  Louisiana  and  Mississippi 
against  his  father-in-law,  yet  everywhere  declar 
ing  the  general  to  be  both  a  noble  man  and  a  great 
soldier  and,  in  consequence  of  this  moderation  and 
of  his  relationship  to  the  president,  it  was  expected 
in  Washington  in  March,  1849,  tnat  tne  Missis 
sippi  senator  would  have  great  influence  at  the 
White  House  during  the  incoming  administration. 
But  when  the  new  president  came  out  for  the 
admission  of  California  as  a  free  state,  not  only 
Davis,  but  the  South  in  general,  was  bitterly  dis-  \ 
appointed.  Furthermore,  the  president  threat 
ened  to  send  the  United  States  army  into  New 
Mexico  if  the  people  who  were  trying  to  make 
that  region  pro-slavery  did  not  desist.  The  crisis 
of  1850  had  been  foreshadowed  by  the  election  of 
1848;  its  bitterness  was  assured  by  the  determined 
attitude  of  the  new  administration.  Davis  and 
Foote  left  Mississippi  in  November,  1849,  con" 
vinced  that  the  people  of  that  state  would  secede 
rather  than  allow  the  admission  of  California  as 
a  free  state.  There  was  almost  unanimity  of  feel 
ing  on  the  subject.  Whigs  were  disgusted  with 


190  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Taylor,  and  Democrats  were  enraged.  The' mass 
meetings  which  assembled  in  various  places  not 
only  in  Mississippi  but  in  the  South  as  a  whole 
were  attended  by  the  leaders  of  both  parties.  And 
these  meetings  called  for  a  general  Southern  con 
vention  to  take  counsel  what  to  do  in  the  coming 
conflict.  Davis  was  convinced  that  the  South 
should  demand  the  extension  of  the  line  of  36° 
30'  to  the  Pacific  and  that  new  states  south  of 
that  line  should  be  admitted  as  slave  states  and 
that  southern  California  should  of  course  come 
in  at  once  as  a  slave  state. 

There  is  no  space  in  a  paper  like  this  to  discuss 
the  long  debates  in  congress,  the  Nashville  con 
vention  and  the  final  submission  of  the  South  to 
the  compromise  legislation  of  1850.  Davis 
thought  that  the  South  should  have  stood  to 
gether  to  the  last  and  that  Southern  states  should 
have  taken  steps  toward  secession  when  their 
ultimatum  as  to  California  was  not  heeded.  He 
believed,  and  I  think  he  was  correct  in  this,  that 
Clay  and  Fillmore,  after  the  death  of  Taylor  in 
1850,  would  have  yielded  all  that  was  asked. 
What  brought  the  humiliation  of  the  South  was 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  191 

in  his  opinion,  the  demagoguery  of  Alexander 
Stephens,  his  own  colleague,  Henry  S.  Foote,  and 
the  weakness  of  John  Bell  of  Tennessee.  When 
Foote  declared  in  the  Senate  that  Davis  no  longer 
represented  the  public  opinion  of  Mississippi,  the 
latter,  unlike  the  present  habit  of  senators,  offered 
to^tesign  and  challenged  his  colleague  to  do  the 
same  and  go  home  and  fight  it  out  before  the 
people.  Foote  accepted.  They  became  rival  can 
didates  for  the  governorship  of  the  state  and 
canvassed  the  counties  of  Mississippi  much  after 
the  fashion  of  Douglas  and  Lincoln  in  1858. 
The  decision  was  in  favor  of  Foote,  and  Davis 
retired  to  his  estate  a  stranded  politician  with  lit-  ; 
tie  prospect  of  ever  emerging  again  as  a  leader 
and  exponent  of  his  state.  It  would  be  inter 
esting  indeed  to  read  his  private  correspondence 
during  the  years  1851  and  1852,  but  this  seems 
to  be  impossible  since  most  of  his  papers 
and  library  were  destroyed  by  federal  troops  in 
1863  during  the  Vicksburg  campaign.  But  I  be-  x 

lieve  Davis  gave  up  the  idea  of  secession  and  the 

\s' 

hope  of  united  action  on  the  part  of  the  Southern   / 
states. 


192  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

II 

In  this  case  as  in  many  another  the  unexpected 
happened.  The  Democrats  won  in  the  election 
of  1852  and  Davis,  the  former  extremist,  was 
selected  for  a  principal  place  in  the  new  cabinet. 
Pierce  owed  neither  his  nomination  nor  his  elec 
tion  to  Davis ;  in  fact,  Mississippi  leaders  had  less 
to  do  with  this  campaign  than  almost  any  other 
Southern  group.  But  Franklin  Pierce  was  a  per 
sonal  friend  of  Davis,  and  Caleb  Gushing  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  who  was  a  still  closer  friend,  was  also 
very  close  to  the  president-elect.  Gushing  and 
Pierce  talked  over  Southern  men  and  Davis  was 
their  choice.  No  abler  man  could  have  been 
selected  from  the  South,  though  it  is  very  doubt 
ful  if  he  would  have  been  chosen  by  the  voters  of 
that  section  as  a  representative.  It  may  as  well 
be  said  now  as  later  that  his  administration  of 
the  war  department  was  regarded  as  peculiarly 
able  and  satisfactory  to  all  groups  of  opinion  in 
the  country,  and  the  old  story  that  he  used  his 
office  to  prepare  the  way  for  secession  is  utterly 
unworthy  of  credence  in  the  light  of  the  facts 
and  of  his  own  history. 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  193 

Pierce  had  won  the  electoral  votes  of  every 
state  in  the  Union  except  four:  Massachusetts, 
Vermont,  Kentucky  and  Tennessee,  and  this  over 
whelming  victory  was  due  to  the  feeling  of  the 
country  that  there  had  been  agitation  enough  and 
that  slavery,  definitely  limited  to  a  certain  area, 
was  not  henceforth  to  be  the  bone  of  contention 
between  the  North  and  the  South.  I  cannot  say  \ 

from  documentary  evidence  that  Davis  was  also   I 

i 
of  this  opinion,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  such  was/ 

undoubtedly  his  view. 

.What  sort  of  man  was  this  Davis,  destined,  as 
it  turned  out,  to  be  the  backbone  of  the  adminis 
trations  of  both  Pierce  and  Buchanan?  He  was 
a  tall,  spare  man  forty-four  years  old,  with  large 
gray  eyes,  rather  large  and  irregular  features ;  his 
limbs  were  long  and  slender  and  rather  loosely 
joined  together,  reminding  one  of  his  fellow 
Kentuckian  whose  fame  was  so  soon  to  fill  the 
earth,  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  was  full  six  feet  tall 
and  carried  himself  well,  as  do  most  "West  Point 
ers";  every  inch  an  aristocrat,  as  Carl  Schurz, 
who  saw  him  about  this  time,  said.  He  seldom 
walked  about  Washington  during  his  eight  years 
13 


i94  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

residence  there  just  preceding  the  civil  war;  but 
everybody  knew  him  and  almost  every  one  liked 
him.  His  carriage  took  him  daily  to  his  office 
or  to  the  President's  house  where  he  was  welcome 
at  all  times;  or  in  the  afternoon  he  might  have 
been  seen  on  a  handsome  saddle  horse  going  out 
to  Cabin  John's  Bridge  or  watching  the  progress 
of  the  work  on  the  present  capitol  which  was 
completed  under  his  supervision.  Strength,  will, 
imperious  determination  sat  upon  the  brow  and 
countenance  of  this  man  of  feeble  health  but  iron 
constitution. 

During  the  four  years  that  Davis  was  at  the 
head  of  the  war  department,  he  formulated  both 
for  the  President  and  himself  the  policy  which  he 
was  to  follow  until  1861  and  which  but  for 

y'  /Stephen  A.  Douglas  would  in  all  probability  have 
become  the  settled  policy  of  the  country.  This 
was  the  building  of  a  Southern  Pacific  railway 
with  its  eastern  terminus  at  Memphis,  the  acquisi 
tion  of  the  Panama  canal  zone,  the  purchase  of 
Cuba,  the  opening  of  Japan  and  China  to  Amer 
ican  trade,  and  the  cultivation  of  closer  commer- 

\ cial  relations  with  South  America.     This  was  a 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  195 

bold  scheme,  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  it  was 
very  different  from  that  which  has  been  actually 
followed  by  the  country  from  that  day  until 
the  present  time.  There  was  something,  too, 
in  the  program  for  all  sections  and  interests, 
though  the  South  was  to  have  the  lion's 
share  just  as  the  North  has  given  herself 
under  post-bellum  administrations.  Undoubtedly 
Caleb  Gushing,  one  of  the  very  greatest  minds 
Massachusetts  has  ever  produced — though  one 
does  not  hear  this  in  Boston — was  in  part  the 
author  of  this  program,  and  the  President  was 
entitled  to  call  it  "my  policies." 

Davis,  the  former  strict  constructionist  and  fol-  "} 
lower  of  Calhoun,  the  arch-secessionist,  announced  / 
a  part  of  the  general  plan,  his  role  in  particular, v^ 
the  Pacific  railway,  to  a  Philadelphia  audience  in/ 
the  autumn  of  1853.     It  was  astonishing,  yet  the 
"captains   of    industry"    liked   it    and    Southern 
leaders  were  pleased  if  only  it  could  be  carried 
without  raising  that  everlasting  question,   con 
stitutionality.     Davis  arranged  this  point  nicely) 
by  proposing  to  build  the  road  under  the  war  } 
powers  of  the  federal  government.     That  sounds 


196  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

like  Calhoun  in  the  early  days  when  he  was  war 
,  secretary  or  like  Clay  when  he  was  planning  his 
first  great  American  highway,  or  not  unlike  Cal- 
houn's  notable  Memphis  program  of  1845.  And 
the  idea  was  based  on  the  same  general  scheme  of 
politics :  the  alliance  of  the  South  and  West — the 
old  theme  of  Jefferson  in  1800,  of  Calhoun  and 
Clay  in  1812  and  of  Jackson  in  1828.  How 
many  times  has  not  this  plan  filled  the  mind  of 
politician  and  statesman  in  this  country!  And 
now  that  Pierce  had  practically  all  the  country 
behind  him,  why  not?  Certainly  there  was 
enough  in  the  scheme  to  make  a  president  and 
Davis  was  not  averse  to  the  hum  of  that  famous 
bee,  though  his  ambition  was  not  hasty,  nor  his 
electioneering  evident.  He  proposed  to  build  the 
road  and  then  seek  the  presidency  or  at  any  rate 
make  a  good  beginning.  One  thing  he  miscal 
culated,  the  capacity  of  the  people  of  the  North 
west  for  self-sacrifice,  for  his  scheme  involved,  to 
a  certain  extent,  the  isolation  of  the  middle  and 
northwestern  states.  It  would  have  made  St. 
Louis  a  Chicago  and  Memphis  a  St.  Louis. 
Many  men  in  Illinois  saw  the  meaning  of  the 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  197 

Davis  plan;  but  that  might  not  have  meant  so 
much  had  it  not  been  for  their  leader,  Stephen  A. 
Douglas,  whose  love  for  the  Middle  West  was 
quite  as  great  as  that  of  Davis  for  the  South. 
Douglas  returned  to  his  place  in  the  Senate  in 
December  following  the  Philadelphia  utterance 
with  a  plan  of  his  own — one  which  would  satisfy 
Chicago  interests  and  give  new  lands  to  the  rest 
less  Iowa  pioneer. 

Senator  Douglas  had  been  a  strong  competitor 
of  Pierce  for  the  nomination  in  1852,  but  Douglas 
was  not  invited  to  become  a  member  of  the  cabinet 
as  might  have  been  expected.  The  representa 
tives  of  the  West  in  the  Pierce  cabinet  were 
James  Guthrie,  a  railroad  president  from  Ken 
tucky,  and  Robert  McClellan,  a  Michigan  politi 
cian,  whose  name  counted  for  nothing  in  national 
affairs.  In  the  West  there  were  two  interests 
contending  for  the  supremacy:  that  of  the  St. 
Louis  railway  promoters  headed  by  Benton,  who 
had  lost  his  hold  upon  his  constituents,  and  that 
of  the  Chicago  capitalists  headed  by  Douglas, 
whose  power  had  already  eclipsed  that  of  both 
Cass  and  Benton.  Douglas  was  preeminently  a 


198  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

representative  of  the  "moneyed  classes"  and  his 
purpose  was  to  build  railroads  from  Chicago 
westward  and  northwestward  which  should  tie  to 
that  growing  town  the  great  "back-country"  of 
Iowa  and  the  Nebraska  territory  then  embracing 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  square  miles.  It  was 
j  a  long  and  bitter  struggle  between  the  two  cities 
and  the  outcome  depended  on  the  turn  of  national 
policy — whether  votes  could  be  found  for  giving 
aid  to  the  contemplated  roads  and  whether  a 
Pacific  railway  could  be  made  to  unload  its  enrich 
ing  commerce  in  Chicago  or  St.  Louis. 

Since  1847,  Douglas  had  been  a  railroad  states 
man,  his  first  essay  being  the  Illinois  Central  and 
the  Mobile  and  Ohio,  for  both  of  which  he  had 
obtained  rich  grants  of  public  lands  from  con 
gress.  These  two  roads  connected  New  Orleans 
and  Chicago  and  united  more  firmly  the  lower 
South  and  the  Northwest,  already  tied  together 
by  the  Mississippi.  Having  won  the  initial  fight 
he  thought  in  1854  to  "carry"  the  infinitely 
greater  scheme,  the  Pacific  railway  with  its  eastern 
terminus  at  some  point  on  the  western  border  of 
Iowa  which  meant  that  Chicago  would  be  the  real 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  199 

winner.  The  forces  which  Douglas  must  unite 
were  the  same  which  had  supported  his  Illinois 
Central-Mobile  and  Ohio  program  of  1850,*  the 
middle  West,  the  lower  South  and  New  York 
commercial  interests. 

The  South  was  devoted  above  all  else  to  slavery 
and  the  New  York  democracy  was  handmaid  to 
this  Southern  interest.  The  old  Benton  group  had  \ 
been  overshadowed  in  Missouri  by  the  Atchison 
pro-slavery  party.  To  unite  these  elements  of\ 
the  national  economic  life  in  support  of  his  plans,  , 
Douglas  mus^  resort  to  some  finesse  for  which 
he  was  eminently  qualified.  What  the  Gulf 
states  demanded  in  1854  was  the  expansion  of 
the  area  of  slavery  and  the  consequent  increase 
of  her  power  in  congress.  This  idea,  too,  was 
also  exceedingly  popular  in  the  old  South,  in 
states  like  Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  and  the 
Whig  party  in  Kentucky  was  fast  coming  to 
the  same  position;  Atchison's  following  in 
Missouri  was  about  to  overthrow  Benton  on  a 
pro-slavery  issue  and  was  consequently  half 
ready  for  cooperation  with  the  lower  South. 
1  Johnson,  A.,  Life  of  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  166-176. 


200  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

New  York  railroad  men  and  capitalists  required 
only  profits.  Douglas  was  willing  to  satisfy  all 
these  demands. 

N  Davis's  scheme  for  a  Pacific  railway  was,  of 
necessity,  based  upon  the  assumption  that  its 
eastern  terminus  would  be  Memphis,  and  its  adop 
tion  by  congress  depended  upon  whether  the 
former  Benton  following  could  be  won.  Davis 
expected  to  win  this  party  through  Atchison, 
for  Atchison  and  Davis  were  intimate  friends 
and  ardent  pro-slavery  Democrats.  Senator 
Jones  of  Iowa  had  been  a  schoolmate  of  Davis 
at  Transylvania  University  in  1821  to  1824  and 
they  were  on  the  best  of  terms ;  the  two  Dodges, 
both  senators,  one  from  Iowa,  the  other  from 
Wisconsin,  were  also  friends  of  long  standing. 
Davis  counted  therefore  on  winning  the  debatable 
ground  of  Missouri  and  Iowa  for  his  undertaking, 
granting  to  St.  Louis  a  branch  line  connecting 
that  city  with  the  far  West,  thus  in  reality  offer 
ing  to  divide  the  eastern  terminus  of  the  proposed 
road.  The  President  joined  the  Mississippi 
leader  and  called  the  attention  of  congress  in 
his  message  of  December,  1853,  to  the  important 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  201 

subject  and  at  the  same  time  reported  the  annexa 
tion  of  the  Mesilla  valley  region — a  cession  of 
territory  from  Mexico  for  the  very  purpose  which 
Davis  had  in  mind. 

Douglas  had  not  been  idle.  As  chairman  of 
the  committee  on  territories  he  offered  in  the 
Senate  on  January  4,  1854,  the  bill  which  was  to 
revolutionize  the  politics  of  the  time.  Douglas 
had  been  interested  in  creating  a  new  territory 
west  of  Iowa  many  years.  This  interest  in  1854 
was  as  before  largely  dependent  upon  the  expec 
tation  of  building  the  Pacific  railway  which  should 
terminate  on  the  western  border  of  Iowa,  con 
necting  there  with  Chicago  roads.  Thus  two 
great  plans  of  expansion  and  westward  develop 
ment  were  presented  to  the  country  almost  at  the 
same  time.  In  order  to  win  the  South,  Douglas 
finally  changed  his  bill  so  as  to  open  the  Kansas 
end  of  the  Nebraska  territory  to  slavery.  This/ 
secured  Atchison  at  once,  who  had  already  been  \ 
endeavoring  to  amend  the  Missouri  compromise 
law  so  as  to  admit  slavery  into  territories  north 
of  a  parallel  of  36°  30' ;  it  won  strong  Kentucky 
support  and  enthusiastic  approval  throughout  the  J 


202  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

South.  The  great  railway  scheme  behind  Doug 
las's  efforts  was  not  broached;  but  from  the  evi 
dence  now  available  I  think  it  hardly  open  to  suc 
cessful  dispute  that  his  major  interest  was  in  the 
\j 

building  of  the  railway.     The  concession  to  the 

/  South  on  the  point  of  slavery  extension  was  not 
to  Douglas  very  important,  not  comparable  to  the 
building  of  a  railroad  which  would  call  into 
existence  a  line  of  prosperous  communities  all  the 
way  across  the  continent  and  make  of  Chicago  the 
greatest  city  of  the  West.  That  Atchison  and  his 
friends  would  control  Kansas  and  practically  name 
the  early  delegates  in  congress  was  not  a  matter 
of  concern  to  him,  for  was  it  not  all  inside  the 
Democratic  party? 

No  one  was  more  surprised  at  the  sudden  up 
heaval  which  followed  the  introduction  of  the 
Kansas  measure  than  its  author  and  he  never 
freed  himself  from  the  delusion  that  the  excite 
ment  was  due  to  the  machinations  of  Chase  and 
Sumner.  Of  course  Douglas  could  not  go  before 
the  people  and  say  his  object  was  the  development 
and  expansion  of  the  middle  West,  and  it  would 
have  been  equally  unwise  to  say  that  the  South 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  203 

could  not  in  the  nature  of  the  case  profit  from 
the  measure. 

But  while  the  Douglas  plans  did  not  prosper 
Davis  was  completely  checkmated  by  a  leader  of 
his  own  party,  at  the  very  outset  of  his  secon^'7 
political  career.  The  angry  discussions  in  con 
gress  and  the  flaming  popular  resentment  in  all 
parts  of  the  North  served  to  show  him  that  the 
South  was  in  danger  and  that  some  increase  in 
the  number  of  Southern  states  was  absolutely 
necessary  if  he  and  his  friends  were  to  continue 
to  control  the  legislation  of  the  country.  His 
railroad  plans  were  therefore  the  more  important 
— so  important  that  he  made  up  his  mind  not 
to  allow  any  other  than  a  Southern  Pacific  line  to 
be  established.  He  counted  on  the  power  of  the 
South,  upon  the  favorable  attitude  of  the  majority 
of  the  Senate  and  upon  the  real  advantages  which 
he  was  certain  would  be  offered  by  a  survey  of 
the  route  by  way  of  southern  New  Mexico.  But 
the  bold  secretary  of  war  was  predestined  to 
defeat;  he  was  never  able  to  secure  a  favorable 
vote  even  in  the  friendly  Senate  though  at  the 
close  of  the  Pierce  administration  he  took  up  the 


204  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

,  cause  in  that  body  himself.  Neither  was  Douglas 
able,  after  the  blighting  effect  of  his  Kansas-Ne 
braska  bill,  to  secure  a  favorable  decision  upon  his 
major  measure.  The  Gulf  states  were  neutralized 
by  the  influence  of  the  upper  Mississippi  region 
and  nothing  was  done  until  a  new  regime  came 
to  power. 

But   Jefferson   Davis   did   not    return  to   his 
former  position,  that  of   1850.     He  served  his 

/^country  as  secretary  of  war  with  whole-hearted 
enthusiasm  though  it  must  be  said  that  he  never 
lost  sight  of  the  interests  of  the  South.  The  army 
was  enlarged,  improved  guns  were  introduced, 
young  officers  were  sent  off  on  various  surveying 
parties  for  their  better  training,  and  the  youthful 
George  B.  McClelland  was  sent  as  a  special  repre 
sentative  of  the  war  department  to  observe  and 
study  the  movements  of  the  British  and  Russian 
armies  in  Crimea.  Robert  E.  Lee,  his  boyhood 
friend,  was  made  superintendent  of  the  West 
Point  Academy  and  Albert  Sidney  Johnston  was 
advanced  to  important  command;  camels  were 
brought  from  Arabia  and  assigned  to  the  western 
army  posts  in  the  hope  that  they  might  be  used  in 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  205 

transporting  military  stores  across  the  western 
deserts.  The  war  department  was  alert  and 
active  while  the  future  confederate  president  was 
in  charge,  and  an  examination  of  many  personal  / 
letters  received  by  him  during  that  time  has  re 
vealed  no  proof  that  he  was  preparing  the  way 
for  future  movements.  He  was  a  nationalist^ 
now  and  as  a  nationalist  planned  "large  things." 
It  was  upon  his  advice  as  well  as  upon  that  of 
Caleb  Gushing  that  Townshend  Harris  and  Com 
modore  Perry  were  sent  to  Japan  in  the  interest 
of  American  trade;  that  the  attention  of  the 
country  was  called  to  the  importance  of  the 
Panama  canal  project  and  the  Clay  ton-Bui  wer 
treaty  negotiated;  and  that  the  purchase  of  Cuba 
from  Spain  was  insisted  upon  by  both  Pierce  and 
Buchanan.  Davis  was  the  true  imperialist  who 
believed  that  the  borders  of  the  United  States 
ought  to  be  expanded  in  all  directions,  that  no 
weak  and  maudlin  sentiment  about  the  rights  of 
weaker  nations  and  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence  ought  to  prevent  the  American  government 
from  advancing  to  a  position  of  power  and  in 
fluence  in  the  world.  Still  it  was  the  South 


206  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

which  was  to  rule  this  imperialist  republic,  the 
South  whose  leaders  were  experienced  statesmen 
and  diplomats,  and  not  the  fickle  and  uncertain 
Northern  democracy  imbued  with  notions  of 
equality,  universal  suffrage  and  free  discussion. 

In  these  policies  he  enjoyed  the  enthusiastic 
support  of  Mississippi,  the  most  aggressive  ex 
pansionist  state  in  the  Union  during  the  years  just 
preceding  the  civil  war.  Alexander  G.  Brown, 
a  leader  of  little  less  importance  in  the  lower 
South  than  Davis  himself,  was  calling  for  the 
forcible  seizure  of  Central  American  states  in 
order  that  Southern  institutions  might  be  carried 
there;  he,  too,  desired  the  Panama  zone  in  order 
that  our  "shore  line"  might  be  extended  on  to 
California  and  next  he  would  have  reasoned, 
with  eminent  publicists  of  to-day,  that  all  com 
munities  within  our  "shore  lines"  by  a  sort  of 
manifest  destiny  belonged  to  the  United  States.1 
Other  Mississippians  and  other  Southerners 
dreamed  dreams  about  American  greatness  very 
much  like  those  of  the  present  time;  no  wonder 
Davis  was  an  imperialist  and  that  he  desired  to 
'Hart,  A.  B.,  Actual  Government,  273-276. 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  207 

annex  all  Mexico  and  planned  to  extend  the  Cot 
ton  Kingdom  over  the  new  region. 

Ill 

The  administration  of  Buchanan  was  one  longv 
struggle  of  the  South,  which  then  dominated  the   ) 
Supreme  Court,   the  United   States  Senate  and  ' 
controlled  the  cabinet,  to  make  sure  its  power  in/ 
the  nation.     The  Democratic  party  was  the  great 
conservative  organization  through  which  the  lead- 
ers  of  the  South  acted.     The  Democratic  party 
was  dominated  by  the  South  and  the  South  was 
absolutely  subordinated  to  her  one  great  economic 
interest,  slavery.     The  South  was  "solid"  on  that 
subject.     No  newspaper  could  thrive  in  that  broad 
region  unless  its  editor  defended  the  institution, 
no   preacher   could   hold  his   congregation   who 
failed  to  do  homage  to  the  one  supreme  power 
which  made  and  unmade  public  men  at  will,  no 
professor  was  allowed  to  teach  in  any  college  if  he 
dissented  from  the  view  of  the  planter  class  on 
slavery.1     The  legislative,  the  executive  and  the 
judicial  powers  of  all  the  Southern  states  were  in 

xAt  William  and  Mary  College,  University  of  North 
Carolina,  and  Murfreesboro  College,  Tenn.,  examples  were 
made  of  men  who  opposed  slavery,  1856-1860. 


208  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

the  hands  of  men  who  owned  slaves  just  as  all 
these  functions  of  most  of  the  Northern  and  East 
ern  states  to-day  are  dominated  by  the  corpora 
tions  and  the  monopolistic  interests  of  the  North. 
But  this  united  South  governed  by  its  trained 
statesmen  and  men  of  affairs  did  not  control  a 
majority  of  the  votes  of  the  Democratic  party; 
more  than  half  of  the  support  of  the  party  came 
from  that  great  region  then  known  as  the  North 
-west,  to-day  the  middle  West.  The  man  who 

could  deliver  this  section  to  the  Southern  leaders 
I 
and  guarantee  success  at  the  polls  in  1860,  was 

Stephen  A.  Douglas,  supported  by  the  commer 
cial,  the  speculative  and  especially  the  railroad 
interests  of  the  upper  Mississippi  states;  and 
Douglas  was  himself  the  master  of  a  hundred 
slaves.  The  associates  and  lieutenants  of  Doug 
las  in  the  Northwest  were  Governor  Wright  of 
Indiana,  Jesse  D.  Bright,  a  Kentucky  slave-owner, 
who  represented  Indiana  in  the  United  States 
Senate  and  James  Shields,  senator  from  Minne 
sota  but  at  the  same  time  representative  of  the 
Illinois  Central  railroad.  One  other  senator  from 
the  Northwest  who  would  go  farther,  perhaps, 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  209 

in  aid  of  the  South  than  any  of  these  was  George 
W.  Jones  of  Iowa  of  whom  Henry  A.  Wise  wrote 
to  Secretary  John  B.  Floyd :  "He  is  as  good  a 
nigger  man  as  you  or  I." 

The  leaders  of  the  South  were  Jefferson  Davis, 
Howell  Cobb,  R.  M.  T.  Hunter  and  Henry  A. 
Wise,  all  but  one  heads  of  the  chief  committees 
in  the   United  States   Senate.      Davis   was   the 
ablest,  the  purest,  the  wisest  of  this  group  and  all 
Washington  official  life  deferred  to  him  during 
these  last  palmy  days  of  the  ante-bellum  South. 
The  senator  from  Mississippi  was  indeed  Cal- 
houn's  successor.     He  spoke   for  the  South  as ', 
could  no  other,  and  like  Calhoun,  he  was  the 
representative  of  property,  of  the  "interests"  not 
of  the  struggling  masses  of  common  mankind  who 
had  adored  Jefferson.     Davis  did  not  now  believe 
in  secession;  but  he  counted  on  being  able  to 
govern  the  nation  through  the  great  powers  of 
the  Senate.     It  was  not  then,  as  it  is  not  now,  the\ 
interest  of  powerful  property  holders  to  break  up  \ 
the  government  and  none  saw  this  more  clearly ' 
than  Davis. 

Looking  carefully  over  the  nation  he  found  a 
14 


V/U 


210  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

large  minority  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania 
so  devoted  to  Democratic  tradition  that  it  would 
have  required  an  earthquake  to  shake  their  alle 
giance,  just  as  we  find  in  the  same  region  to-day 
a  hide-bound  devotion  to  the  Republican  party  as 
such.  Tammany  Hall,  under  the  control  of 
Fernando  Wood,  who  was  soon  to  become  Mayor 
of  New  York,  assisted  by  the  wealth  of  August 
Belmont  and  Cornelius  Vanderbilt,  was  then  as 
now  ready  to  do  the  bidding  of  the  strongest  group 
in  the  Democracy,  which  was  the  South.  Besides, 
all  the  vast  and  growing  patronage  of  the  federal 
government  was  in  the  hands  of  the  South  for 
distribution.  The  tariff  had  been  adjusted  so  that 
the  hungry  business  interests  of  Pennsylvania 
looked  to  the  party  of  the  South,  and  not  that  of 
Seward  and  Chase,  for  further  favors.  The  Su 
preme  Court  as  already  indicated  was  composed 
of  slaveholders  and  men  who  lived  in  the  North, 
but  who  might  have  lamented  that  they  had  not 
been  born  south  of  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line 
in  order  to  enjoy  the  blessings  of  "the  institu 
tion."  The  lawyers  and  planters  who  sat  on 
that  august  bench  were  men  who  had  been 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  211 

trained  in  the  school  of  conservatism;  their 
very  mental  processes  served  them  well  in  their 
search  for  reasons  and  precedents  to  sustain  the 
dominant  interests  of  the  time.  There  was  little 
likelihood  that  a  change  in  the  character  of  that 
body  would  occur  in  a  decade. 

Well  aware  that  these  great  points  in  the  game 
gave  him  more  than  even  chances  against  the  in 
surgent  North,  Davis  gave  his  thoughts  to  the 
affairs  of  the  Buchanan  administration  in  which 
he  was  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  powerful  as  he  had 
been  when  he  was  actually  a  member  of  the 
cabinet.  He  was  consulted  on  all  important  ques 
tions  ;  he  read  and  improved  presidential  messages 
to  suit  his  wishes ;  he  dictated  most  of  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  country  and  devised  measures  fofV 
the  further  aggrandizement  of  the  South,  confi 
dent  that  his  section  and  his  great  "interest," 
slavery,  would  not  be  thrust  from  the  seat  of  the 
mighty  for  years  to  come. 

The  purchase  of  Cuba,  that  "pearl  of  the  Antil-  ] 
les"  which  had  so  long  dangled  before  the  covet 
ous  eyes  of  American  statesmen,  was  a  prime 
object  of  Davis  and  his  close  co-workers,  Benja- 


212  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

min  and  Slidell,  senators  from  Louisiana;  the 
break-up  of  the  Mexican  Republic  was  encouraged 
and  planned  in  the  mission  of  John  Forsyth  to 
Mexico  j1  and  the  making  of  Kansas  a  slave  state 
was  expected  as  a  result  of  Robert  J.  Walker's 
appointment  to  the  governorship  of  that  unhappy 
territory.  These  were  large  undertakings;  but 
they  were  hardly  less  likely  to  be  accomplished 
than  had  been  the  annexation  of  California,  the 
settlement  of  the  Oregon  question,  the  passage  of 
the  Walker  tariff  and  the  reorganization  of  the 
finance  of  the  country  all  during  the  stormy  years 
of  Folk's  administration.  The  party  was  then 
new  in  office;  it  was,  in  1857,  old  and  thoroughly 
entrenched.  In  1845  *ne  great  conservative 
Whig  party  was  still  in  existence;  in  1857  the 
opposition  was  made  up  of  the  rank  and  file  of 
the  common  people  with  mere  idealists  for  lead 
ers — such  for  example  as  the  Democratic  situation 
offered  in  1897.  If  ever  the  great  moneyed  and 
conservative  interests  of  the  nation  held  full  sway 
it  was  during  the  four  years  just  preceding  the 

1  Callahan,  J.  M.  Paper  read  before  the  American  His 
torical  Association  at  its  recent  meeting  in  Indianapolis, 
December,  1910. 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  213 

civil  war — and  none  knew  this  better  than  Jef-  / 
ferson  Davis,  before  whom  Buchanan  is  said  to/ 
have  trembled  on  more  than  one  occasion. 

But  there  was  a  cloud  in  the  heavens  scarce  \ 
larger  than  a  man's  hand ;  it  rose  from  the  lake  , 
region  of  the  Northwest.  Douglas  was  not  satis-  S 
fied  and  Douglas  was  a  "power"  in  the  Democratic/ 
party.  Robert  J.  Walker,  the  former  Mississippi 
"boss," — the  man  who  had  brought  Jefferson 
Davis  into  public  life  during  the  exciting  Polk 
campaign  fifteen  years  before — was  not  satisfied 
to  do  the  bidding  of  the  Buchanan-Davis-Cobb 
political  junta  in  Kansas  and  deserted  the  South 
ern  leaders  with  whom  he  had  acted  since  he  be 
came  an  ardent  champion  of  the  cause  of  Texas 
annexation  in  1836.  Walker  sustained  the  free 
state  party  in  Kansas  and  returned  to  Washing 
ton  in  the  autumn  of  1857  to  win  the  President's 
approval  or  to  resign  his  office  and  appeal  to  the 
Democratic  masses  of  the  North — the  insurgents 
of  the  time — for  vindication.  Buchanan  repudi 
ated  Walker,  and  the  latter  resigned;  Davis  de 
nounced  the  "traitorous"  governor  who  came  to 
the  capital  pleading  the  cause  of  men  who  enlisted 


But  Douglas  took  up  the  cause  of  Walker  and  on 


214  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

under  the  banner  of  John  Brown  of  Osawatomie. 
The  South  was  disgusted;  the  man  who  had  led 
or  prodded  Polk  into  his  war  with  Mexico  and 
asked  for  the  dismemberment  of  that  unfortunate 
republic  in  1847,  largely  on  behalf  of  the  pro- 
slavery  interests,  was  now  unwilling  to  make 

Kansas  a  slave  state ! 
f 

December  9,  1857,  delivered  one  of  his  greatest 
speeches  in  the  Senate  in  defense  of  the  "squat 
ters"  who  claimed  the  right  under  his  Kansas- 
Nebraska  bill  of  three  years  before  to  settle  the 
slavery  question  by  popular  vote  and  a  fair  count. 
Douglas  had  been  meditating  such  a  course 
some  time.  The  work  of  Walker  in  Kansas  had 
aroused  much  popular  enthusiasm  in  the  North 
west  and  Walker  had  consulted  Douglas  as  to 
the  proper  policy  in  Kansas  both  on  his  way  to 
his  pest  and  on  his  return  to  Washington  in 
November.  And  Douglas,  mindful  of  the  party 
interests,  had  carried  the  matter  to  Buchanan 
before  congress  assembled  and  warned  him  not 
to  make  the  fatal  blunder  of  espousing  the 
Lecompton  constitution.  All  to  no  avail.  Doug- 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  215 

las  indicated  to  the  President  that  he  should  op 
pose  the  administration  and  received  the  threat 
that  "no  Democrat  ever  yet  differed  from  an 
administration  of  his  own  choice  without  being  { 
crushed."  To  which  he  replied :  "Mr.  President, 
I  wish  you  to  remember  that  General  Jackson  is 
dead.5>1 

Douglas  was  now  once  again  the  most  popular 
man  in  public  life.  Three  years  before  he  had 
"sidetracked"  Davis's  scheme  for  a  Southern 
Pacific  railway  and  put  the  Democratic  party 
in  a  most  difficult  position  by  the  introduction 
of  his  Kansas-Nebraska  bill;  he  had  then  tasted 
the  bitter  cup  of  unpopularity,  had  heard  him 
self  denounced  in  his  home  town,  had  been  burned 
in  effigy  at  a  thousand  bonfires.  The  South  alone 
was  pleased.  Now  he  was  applauded  by  the  very 
men  who  had  lit  the  torches  of  1854;  Horace 
Greeley  proposed  him  for  the  nominee  of  the  next 
Republican  convention,  while  his  own  party  in 
the  Northwest,  where  men  had  found  it  difficult 
to  defend  him,  rallied  to  him  as  never  before. 
Douglas  had  broken  the  democratic  element  of  i 
Johnson:  Life  of  Douglas,  328. 


216  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

his  party  away  from  its  aristocratic  and  reac 
tionary  moorings.  Men  like  Davis  looked  on 
in  anger  and  wonder  at  the  audacity  of  the  Lit 
tle  Giant  who  could  neither  be  cajoled  nor 
threatened  into  support  of  the  regular  wing  of 
his  party. 

From  December,  1857,  until  the  count  of  the 
votes  after  the  famous  Lincoln-Douglas  debates, 
Davis  and  Buchanan  and  John  Slidell,  with  all 
the  powers  of  the  federal  government  at  their 
command,  waged  a  war  upon  Douglas  which  was 
heartless  and  inveterate  in  its  intense  bitterness. 
Postmasters  who  refused  to  join  the  administra 
tion  party  were  removed  from  office  and  Repub 
lican  candidates  for  the  Illinois  legislature,  which 
was  to  choose  a  successor  to  Douglas,  were  en 
dorsed  by  the  Democratic  president.  Davis 
/watched  the  fight  from  his  summer  resort  in 
Maine  and  hardly  knew  which  to  condemn  the 
loudest — Lincoln's  "house-divided"  speech  or 
Douglas's  Freeport  doctrine.  Both  were  to  him 
treason,  the  one  against  the  country,  the  other 
against  the  Democratic  party,  the  party  of  govern 
ment.  To  a  Mississippi  audience  he  said  later 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  217 

that  he  only  wished  the  two  debaters  might,  like 
the  famous  Kilkenny  cats,  have  killed  themselves 
and  thus  have  rid  the  country  of  the  pest  of  such 
discussions. 

When  it  was  certain  that  Douglas  would  return 
victorious  to  the  Senate  in  the  winter  of  1858, 
Davis  seeing  clearly  the  nature  of  the  struggle 
declared  that  the  next  presidential  contest  would 
be  decided  in  the  national  House  of  Representa 
tives.1  The  Republicans  would  nominate  Seward, 
the  Democrats  would  divide,  the  insurgents  nam 
ing  Douglas  as  their  standard-bearer  and  the 
Southerners  selecting  Davis  or  Yancey,  or  perhaps 
some  border-statesman  like  Breckinridge.  No 
one  thought  Lincoln  would  receive  the  nomina 
tion  or,  if  nominated,  the  majority  of  the  votes  of 
the  country.  Thus  stood  things  to  Davis  on  the 
eve  of  the  Charleston  and  Chicago  conventions. 
The  historic  Democratic  party  had  gone  to  pieces 
with  all  its  great  plans :  expansion  of  the  national 
boundaries,  trade  with  the  far  East,  a  railway  to, 
the  Pacific  and  the  spread  of  slavery  over  the  terri-j 
tories  of  the  Northwest.  One  wing  was  South- 

1  Press  and  Tribune,  Chicago,  December  2,  1858. 


2i8  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

ern,  conservative,  reactionary,  supported  by  the 
wealth  and  respectability  of  the  nation  and  but 
tressed  by  the  Supreme  Court;  the  other  was 
democratic,  progressive,  relying  for  its  success 
upon  the  votes  of  small  farmers  and  mechanics 
and  the  unparalleled  gifts  of  their  leader,  Douglas. 
Nothing  was  clearer  than  that  two  men,  Davis  and 
Douglas,  summed  up  in  their  persons  and  their 
policies  the  ideals  of  the  two  factions  of  the  party 
of  the  country  even  at  that  time  and  these  two 
men  occupied  seats  in  the  Senate.  A  battle  royal 
between  abiding  forces  was  on,  and  no  one  is  sur 
prised  to-day  to  read  in  the  files  of  the  Washing 
ton  papers  of  1859  and  1860  that  the  galleries  of 
the  Senate  were  crowded  from  day  to  day  as  the 
fortunes  of  the  one  side  or  the  other  rose  or  fell. 
The  South  must  have  the  votes  of  the  Northwest 
to  win;  Douglas  must  command  a  Southern  fol 
lowing.  This  was  true  whether  the  coming  con 
test  was  decided  at  the  polls  or  on  the  floor  of  the 
House. 

IV 

Neither  Davis  nor  Douglas  expected  that  war 
would  come  as  a  result  of  the  break  between  the 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  219 

leaders  of  the  South  and  those  of  the  Northwest. 
Calhoun  had  said  in  1844  that  the  one  thing  for 
the  South  to  unite  upon  was  her  property  rights, 
her  one  great  economic  interest,  slavery,  but  he 
had  no  hopes  that  such  a  union  could  be  brought 
about;  he  did  all  that  could  be  done  to  compel 
Southern  men  to  stand  together  upon  this  single 
issue,  but  died  in  the  belief  that  he  had  failed  and 
without  any  idea  that  a  great  war  would  be  waged 
by  the  South  for  these  interests.  Davis  had' 
agreed  with  Calhoun  in  1850  and  he  was  then 
ready  to  secede;  in  1858  he  had  little  thought  of 
breaking  up  the  Union.  He  said  in  Faneuil  Hall 
in  October,  1858,  that  the  radicals  of  the  East 
and  the  extremists  of  the  South  were  to  the  great 
nationalist  masses  as  flies  upon  the  horn  of  the  ox. 
There  was  no  thought  of  disunion  in  any  of  the 
speeches  he  delivered  in  New  England  that  year. 
What  Davis  really  desired  was  the  presidency, 
and  if  the  election  should  go  to  the  House,  he  had 
excellent  chance  of  winning  his  desire.  I  cannot 
but  think  that  if  ever  the  Gushing  papers  now  at 
Newburyport,  Massachusetts,  come  to  light,  this 
will  be  shown  and  that  both  Caleb  Cushing  and 


220  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

Benjamin  F.  Butler  went  to  the  Charleston  con 
vention  in  1860  with  this  thought  nearest  their 
hearts. 

Davis  thought  property  rights,  and  slavery  in 
particular,  would  fare  much  better  under  the  na 
tional  government  than  they  would  be  likely  to 
fare  if  secession  and  civil  war  followed  defeat  at 
the  polls  in  1860.  In  fact  he  published  a  letter 
in  the  Charleston  Mercury  on  November  10,  1860, 
declaring  against  secession.  And  when  in  De 
cember,  1860,  the  Governor  of  Mississippi  called 
a  conference  of  the  state's  delegation  in  congress, 
Davis  voted  against  taking  any  steps  that  might 
_lead  to  a  break-up  of  the  Union.  The  Mississippi 
f~  senator  was  absolutely  sincere  in  his  desire  to 
avert  war  and  when  he  had  been  made  president 
of  the  Confederacy  he  exhausted  every  resource 
to  bring  about  a  peaceful  settlement  and  even  at- 
tempted  a  reconstruction  of  the  Union.1  It  was 
not  Davis's  telegram  to  Beauregard  on  April  12, 
1 86 1,  that  caused  the  first  shot  to  be  fired,  but  the 
decision  of  four  subordinates  of  Beauregard, 

1  Roger  A.  Pryor,  who  then  urged  war  and  who  ordered 
the  firing  at  Fort  Sumter,  confirms  this  view  of  the  author , 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  221 

members  of  the  general's  staff,  Roger  A.  Pryor, 
Louis  T.  Wigfall,  S.  S.  Lee,  of  Charleston,  and 
Senator  Chestnut,  which  set  the  dogs  of  war  to 
their  bloody  work.  Davis  authorized  Beauregard 
to  fire  upon  the  fort  if  Anderson  refused  to  sur 
render;  Beauregard  said  the  same  to  these  hot 
headed  subordinates;  and  Anderson  replied  that 
he  would  surrender  in  two  days.  Pryor  and  his 
associates  did  not  report  to  the  General,  but, 
thinking  that  Davis  was  trying  to  reconstruct 
the  Union  and  negotiate  with  Seward  to  that  end 
and  that  the  chance  of  war  was  about  to  slip  away 

\ 

forever,  they  conferred  together  and  decided  to 
give  the  signal  to  the  gunners  to  fire — and  war 
began,  and  such  a  war!1 

This   much   to   show   Davis's   attitude.      His~i 
people  in  Mississippi  did  not  misinterpret  his  pur-  j 
pose  in  1858.    They  said  he  had  set  his  heart  upon  / 
the  presidency,  and  this  was  not  far  from  thej 
truth.     He  had  also  come  to  see  what  the  South 
would  lose  by  secession.    If  we  admit  now  that 
Jefferson  Davis  was  the  spokesman  of  the  South 
and  of  the  great  property  interests  there,  that  he 

Conversations  with  Roger  A.  Pryor,  December  30,  1909. 


222  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

commanded  the  machinery  of  the  Democratic 
party  and  that  he  did  not  aim  at  breaking  up  the 
Union — all  of  which  I  think  just  and  fair  admis 
sions — what  shall  we  say  was  his  policy,  for  if  he 
did  not  think  clearly  and  peer  into  the  future 
during  the  last  days  of  the  old  regime,  no  one  did. 
One  thing  is  certain.  Davis  did  not  misunder 
stand  the  meaning  of  the  Lincoln-Douglas  contest. 
Lincoln  represented  in  that  fight  the  healthy 
moral,  even  radical,  forces  which  Bryan  and 
others  called  into  action  in  Chicago  in  1896,  that 
C^  is,  Lincoln  stood  for  the  rights  of  men  as  against 
the  rights  of  property,  for  the  Declaration  of  In 
dependence  as  against  the  guarantees  of  the  Con- 
\  stitution;  he  denounced  a  Supreme  Court  which 
declared  that  negroes  had  no  rights  a  white  man 
need  respect  and  he  believed  that,  if  Davis's 
power  continued,  if  the  court  was  not  reformed 
and  the  Democratic  party  defeated,  slavery 
would  gain  a  footing  in  the  Northwest  and  the 
North  might  lose  its  very  status  in  the  nation — 
a  belief  not  ill  founded  if  we  examine  well  the 
sources  of  information  now  available.  These 
ideas  of  Lincoln  and  his  followers  the  South" 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  223 

feared,    for   the    South    no    longer   believed    in 
democracy. 

Douglas  was  nearer  to  Lincoln  than  to  Davis. 
He  insisted  that  the  power  of  property  in  congress 
and  in  the  country  must  be  limited,  that  slavery 
must  not  be  spread  over  the  Northwest,  that  defi 
nite  limits  to  Southern  expansion  had  been  set  by 
climate  and  geography  and  he  demanded  that 
these  limits  be  observed,  for  this  is  what  his 
'''popular  sovereignty"  meant  if  it  meant  anything. 
Douglas  was  a  democrat  even  if  property  inter 
ests  of  the  Northwest  were  behind  him;  he  be 
lieved  in  popular  government  though  he  rode  on 
private  cars  or  "free  passes"  supplied  by  the  rail 
roads  which  he  had  aided.  There  was  thus  not  a 
great  difference  between  Lincoln  and  his  antago 
nist;  and  Horace  Greeley  was  not  so  far  in  the 
wrong  as  some  people  thought  when  he  proposed 
Douglas  for  the  Republican  nomination  in  1860; 
and  the  followers  of  Lincoln  and  Douglas  were 
more  alike  than  their  leaders.  All  wanted  to  limit 
the  bounds  of  slavery,  all  were  disgusted  with  the 
haughty  airs  and  overbearing  conduct  of  the  rul 
ing  element  in  the  Democratic  party ;  and  but  for 


STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

the  metes  and  bounds  which  generations  of  party 
distinctions  and  party  dislikes  set  and  had  set  in 
the  Northwest  in  1858,  these  warring  elements 
would  have  united  and  given  such  a  solid  majority 
that  secession  might  have  been  postponed  indefi 
nitely.  But  in  1858,  as  in  1908,  the  real  forces 
of  reform  were  held  in  check  by  their  own  party 
prejudices;  so  that  overweening  special  interests 
and  monopoly  privileges  which  preyed  upon  the 
public  were  not  brought  to  their  proper  places  in 
the  social  order,  and  the  cost  to  the  country,  im 
mense  as  it  was  during  the  war  which  ensued, 
has  not  been  estimated  aright  nor  even  realized. 

It  was  not  in  the  nature  of  things  for  Davis 
who  occupied  the  position,  say,  of  Senator  Aid- 
rich  or  Secretary  Knox,  to  read  the  signs  of  the 
times  aright.  Property  was  born  blind;  priv 
ileged  interests  in  America,  as  formerly  in  France, 
could  not  be  curbed,  it  seems,  without  destruction, 
and  destruction  is  costly. 

The  work,  then,  of  the  great  senator  from 
Mississippi,  and  Davis  was  a  great  man,  during 
the  winters  of  1858-59  and  1859-60  was  not  in 
the  Senate  nor  yet  in  the  committees  which  he 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  225 

controlled,  but  in  guiding  and  shaping  the  forces 
which  met  Douglas  in  the  Charleston  convention 
in  April,  1860.  To  this  end  he  lent  a  hand  to 
President  Buchanan,  who  also  received  aid  and 
comfort  of  Wall  street,  of  the  high  tariff  forces 
in  Pennsylvania,  and  of  William  L.  Yancey,  the 
Southern  orator,  who  had  set  his  heart  upon 
breaking  up  the  nation  as  it  then  was.  The 
ablest  minds  of  the  country  were  enlisted  on  the 
side  of  Davis  and  the  President:  Howell  Cobb, 
John  Slidell,  R.  M.  T.  Hunter,  Caleb  Cushing, 
B.  F.  Butler,  John  C.  Breckenridge  and  Jesse  D. 
Bright  were  all  engaged  on  the  side,  apparently, 
of  the  "biggest  battalions"  and  much  money  was 
spent  by  these  men  on  behalf  of  their  program.1 
In  the  Senate  Davis  re-read  the  Calhoun  reso 
lutions  of  December,  1837,  anc^  ne  undertook  to 
make  them  the  platform  of  the  party  and  rule 
Douglas  out  since  the  latter  could  not  subscribe 
to  the  doctrine,  put  forth  by  Calhoun  twenty  years 
before,  that  congress  was  duty  and  honor  bound 

1  Slidell  was  reported  by  the  newspapers  as  being  "on 
the  ground"  at  Charleston  two  weeks  before  the  conven 
tion  met  and  "spending  money  freely"  for  the  reactionary 
element  of  the  Democratic  party. 

15 


226  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

/to  protect  property  (slavery)  in  the  territories,  all 
territories  north  as  well  as  south  of  the  line  of 
36°  30'.  These  resolutions  were  supported  by 
the  "regular"  wing  of  the  Democracy  and  de 
bated  from  week  to  week  just  before  and  after  the 
assembling  of  the  Charleston  convention.  The 
whole  purpose  of  Davis  was  to  make  the  strongest 
case  possible  for  slavery,  rally  the  greatest  num 
ber  of  followers  and  give  his  representatives  in 
the  Democratic  national  convention  all  the  moral 
support  that  he  could  command.  Davis  and  the 
administration  thus  said  to  the  country  that  the 
United  States  was  not  a  nation,  but  a  league  of 
states,  which  was  probably  true;  that  congress, 
the  agent  of  the  independent  states,  was  compelled 
under  the  constitution  to  protect  slavery — all 
property  recognized  in  any  state — wherever  it 
might  go,  which  was  also  true;  that  the  federal 
courts  must  thus  interpret  congressional  action, 
and  that  laws  of  individual  states,  which  in  any 
way  connived  at  the  escape  of  fugitive  slaves, 
were  revolutionary.1 

1  These  resolutions  will  be  found  in  the   Congressional 
Globe,  36th  Cong,  ist  Session,  February  2 — March  I,  1860. 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  227 

The  South  demanded  the  recognition  of  this 
"new  Calhounism"  as  the  doctrine  which  the' 
country  must  accept,  the  alternative,  in  the  minds 
of  men  like  Yancey  of  xAlabama  and  Rhett  oV 
South  Carolina  and  A.  G.  Brown  of  Mississippi, 
being  secession.  Davis  thought  that  might  be  a 
lawful  alternative,  but  he  was  not  ready  to  resort 
to  it.  He  expected  as  yet  to  bring  the  Northwest 
to  take  his  view  or  to  expel  Douglas,  the  exponent 
of  the  Northwest,  from  the  party  which  would  be 
equivalent  to  putting  three  parties  into  the  field, 
the  strongest  of  which  would  be  that  of  the 
administration  and  the  South.  The  outcome,  as 
almost  all  politics  showed,  would  be  a  repetition 
of  the  situation  of  1825.  If  he  were  right  in 
his  view  the  "regular"  nominee  of  the  Charles 
ton  convention  would  be  the  next  president  and 
if  secession  were  resorted  to  it  would  be  New 
England,  not  the  South,  which  would  make  the 
move. 

It  was  also  distinctly  the  policy  of  Henry  A. 
.Wise,  1858  and  1861,  to  hold  fast  to  the  federal 
government,  thereby  forcing  the  Abolitionists  and 
the  Republicans  to  make  war  for  the  possession  of 


228  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

/the  capital  in  case  of  the  failure  of  the  Democrats 
\  in  the  elections  of  1860.  Wise  said  many  times 
that  he  would  never  surrender  the  government 
which  "Virginia  had  created,"  that  he  would  pun 
ish  Abolitionists  as  the  authors  of  all  the  trouble. 
Who  was  dissatisfied  ?  the  South  ?  No,  the  radicals 
of  the  North  and  East,  who  declared  the  Consti 
tution  "a  league  with  hell  and  a  covenant  with  the 
devil,"  were  the  complainants;  they  warred  upon 
the  Supreme  Court,  upon  the  states,  upon  the 
existing  order,  and  they  should  be  punished ;  they 
deserved  the  treatment  of  traitors.1  This  was 
the  view  of  many  slaveholders,  of  former  Whigs 
/and  wealthy  Democrats  like  Joseph  Davis  of  Mis 
sissippi  who  knew  what  risks  property  owners 
would  run  if  they  followed  Yancey  and  Rhett  into 
the  untried  path  of  secession  and  independence. 
Jefferson  Davis,  as  spokesman  of  Mississippi,  did 
not  so  openly  express  this  opinion,  but  there  is 
little  reason  to  doubt  that  he  concurred  substan 
tially  with  his  brother. 

When    the    Charleston    convention    failed    to 

letter  to   George  W.   Jones,  July  27,   1857.    In  Iowa 
State  Historical  Society  collection. 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  229 

nominate  either  Douglas  or  a  follower  of  Davis 
and  adjourned  to  meet  again  in  Baltimore  in 
June,  1860,  Davis  was  still  of  the  opinion  that 
the  South  might  win.  Only  late  in  the  summer 
after  two  Democratic  "tickets,"  led  by  Breckin- 
ridge  and  Douglas,  had  been  put  into  the  field,  did  ! 
he  come  to  think  Lincoln's  election  likely;  then 
he  went  to  Douglas  and  offered  to  withdraw 
Breckinridge  and  even  Bell — the  border  states 
candidate — if  Douglas  would  also  withdraw  from 
the  canvass.  Douglas  could  not  yield  for,  as  he 
said,  most  of  his  followers  in  the  Northwest 
would  then  support  Lincoln  who,  strange  as  it 
may  appear,  had  become  as  conservative  as  Doug 
las  and  whose  managers  were  declaring  every  day 
that  slavery  would  not  suffer  if  the  great  Illinois 
Republican  came  to  power.  It  would  be  inter 
esting  indeed  to  know  what  passed  between  the 
bitter  rivals  and  enemies  on  that  September  day. 
One  wonders  to-day  whether  some  Eastern  sena 
tor  or  political  manager  could  thus  propose  and 
promise  changes  in  the  candidates  of  great 
parties,  though  the  nation  of  our  time  is  not  the 
republic  of  1860.  However  that  may  be,  Davis, 


23o  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

defeated  in  his  plans,  retired  to  his  plantation 
in  Mississippi  to  vote,  await  the  returns  and 
to  give  counsel  to  the  lower  South.  It  has 
been  seen  already  that  he  published  his  opposi- 
\  tion  to  secession  in  the  Charleston  Mercury  after 
Lincoln's  election  was  conceded,  that  he  later  ad 
vised  the  governor  and  the  people  of  Mississippi 
not  to  secede.  In  fact  he  returned  early  to  Wash 
ington  to  help  Buchanan  write  his  message,  to 
discuss  with  Major  Anderson,  then  stationed  at 
Charleston,  plans  of  improving  and  enlarging 
the  Military  Academy  at  West  Point  where  he 
had  spent  some  time  during  the  summer  with 
Anderson,  ascertaining  the  needs  of  their  beloved 
Alma  Mater.  This  was  not  the  attitude  of  one 
who  was  preparing  to  break  up  the  government 
or  to  launch  his  craft  upon  the  stormy  sea  of  revo 
lution.  Davis  did  not  think  in  November  or  in 
early  December  that  the  South  ought  to  with 
draw  from  the  Union.  He  hoped  to  control  the 
course  of  events,  or  to  submit  to  the  incoming 
administration  if  his  friend  Seward,  who  was 
thought  to  be  the  master  mind  in  the  rival  party, 
retained  power.  Davis  knew  that  Seward  was 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  231 

himself  the  owner  of  slaves  and  he  never  had  held 
him  a  sincere  man.  Why  should  not  Seward 
give  the  South,  especially  the  large  conservative 
element  there,  what  was  demanded?  Seward 
despised  Lincoln,  though  he  had  agreed  to  sit  in 
the  new  cabinet,  and  it  was  not  at  all  improbable 
that  he  would  bargain  with  the  "interests"  as 
most  other  statesmen  of  the  North  had  done. 
As  a  representative  of  his  class  and  of  his  people, 
Davis  would  not  thus  have  sacrificed  any  trust  or 
violated  any  of  the  assumptions  of  his  high  sta-<^ 
tion.  And  this  view  of  his  position  is  confirmed 
by  a  contemporary  document  preserved  by  Henry 
Adams  and  recently  published.1 

Up  to  December  25,  there  was  every  reason  to 
believe  that  the  great  pro-slavery  party,  with  its 
vast  wealth  at  stake,  its  prestige  and  its  actual 
power  in  question,  would  win  from  the  representa 
tives  of  the  new  party  the  sort  of  promise  which 
had  been  expected  from  Taylor  in  1850  and  which 
Clay  gave,  through  Fillmore,  as  soon  as  "old 
Rough  and  Ready"  was  in  his  grave — that  is,  a 

1  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Proceedings,   XLIII, 
661. 


232  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

promise  not  to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  states 
and  to  allow  the  extension  of  the  line  of  36°  30' 
to  the  Pacific,  which  would  have  meant  the  return 
of  the  South  to  power  in  1864  and  another  slave 
tate  in  southern  California.  Seward  was  wili 
ng  to  grant  this,  the  older  Whig- Republican  lead- 
_rs  would  gladly  have  averted  secession  with  such 
compromise.  Lincoln  alone  refused  to  make 
any  bargain,  though  it  may  safely  be  assumed 
that  had  he  foreseen  what  was  in  store  for  him 
and  the  country  he,  too,  would  have  yielded  and 
the  "interests"  would  have  secured  another  lease 
of  power. 

The  party  of  Jefferson  had  thus  been  trans- 
/  formed  from  an  organization  of  small  farmers 
/    and  backwoods  men,   idealists  in  governmental 
theory,  believers  in  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence,  to  one  which  was  dominated  by  the  "inter 
ests,"  one  whose  dealers  enjoyed  special  privileges 
in  the  state  and  who  could  wield  the  whole  weight 
of  Southern  opinion  and  power  in  Washington 
without  losing  the  support  of  the  loyal  masses 
^     home.     As  parties  grow  old  they,  like  govern 
ments,  abandon  their  idealism,  become  absolutist 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  233 

in  theory  as  well  as  in  practice.  The  JeffersonX 
party  was  no  exception  to  the  rule  notwithstand-  / 
ing  the  heritage  of  its  founder.  Before  the  first 
Republican  president  had  served  out  his  second 
term  his  followers  in  Virginia  were  urging  the 
Southern  Federalists  to  join  their  ranks  and 
promising  the  greatest  possible  security  to  slave 
property.  When  Calhoun  came  to  leadership  in 
congress  he  was  not  sure  what  attitude  to  take, 
and  in  1820  he  approved  the  policy  of  restricting 
the  area  of  slavery;  but  in  1833  he  became  an  ex 
treme  protagonist  of  this  form  of  property. 
Thomas  Ritchie,  a  true  Democrat  in  the  first  part 
of  his  career  as  an  editor  and  leader  of  Virginia, 
was  for  a  long  time  an  anti-slavery  man  at  heart  x 
and  was  about  to  cast  the  weight  of  his  great 
paper,  the  Richmond  Enquirer,  into  the  scales  of 
the  emancipation  party  in  Virginia  in  1831.  For 
some  reason  he  took  definitely  the  pro-slavery 
view,  and  the  Democratic  party  in  the  state  of 
Jefferson  became  the  party  of  slavery,  rivaling 
the  national  Republicans  who,  as  the  party  of  the 
gentry,  had  been  pro-slavery  from  the  beginning, 
despite  their  strong  affiliations  in  New  England. 


234  STATESMEN  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 

From  Calhoun  to  Jefferson  Davis  was  a  long  step. 
Slavery,  as  a  blessing  to  the  South  and  the  world, 
was  the  parent  of  slavery,  a  divinely  established 
order  for  which  all  true  Southerners  must  take 
up  arms.  Yet  Calhoun,  Ritchie  and  Davis  all 
claimed  to  be  the  followers  of  the  author  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  The  party  which 
chose  Buchanan  and  sustained  his  administration, 
which  outlawed  Douglas  and  repudiated  Walker 
in  Kansas,  was  the  party  which  had  been  based 
upon  a  program  of  reform,  of  broad  human  rights, 
of  anti-slavery  ideals,  a  half  century  before. 
Great  men  who  gloried  in  the  Dred  Scott  decision 
honestly  thought  themselves  followers  of  the  man 
who  attacked  the  Supreme  Court  of  Marshall's 
day  as  "sappers  and  miners  of  the  Constitution." 
"A  negro  has  no  rights  which  a  white  man  need 
respect"  was  not  a  doctrine  which  could  have 
emanated  from  Jefferson. 

Thus  far  had  property  rights  and  a  privileged 
status  in  the  nation  brought  many  of  the  ablest 
men  of  that  generation,  and  to  such  extremes 
special  privilege  and  great  wealth  lead  to-day  as 
certainly  as  in  1860.  The  only  essential  differ- 


JEFFERSON  DAVIS  235 

ence  between  the  magnates  who  exploit  the  re 
sources  of  the  country  and  rule  the  Senate  in  1911  / 
and  their  predecessors  of  1861  is  the  lack  of  a  *^ 
general  belief  in  a  doctrine  of  states  rights  which 
would  justify  secession.  Davis  acted,  when  he 
failed  to  negotiate  in  1860  a  tacit  treaty  with 
Seward,  in  the  same  way  that  many  another 
Davis  of  our  time  would  act  if  there  were 
any  appeal  to  a  friendly  but  inflamed  public 
mind.  There  was  talk  of  secession  in  1896  in 
cities  which  poured  out  their  blood  to  suppress 
the  cause  of  the  South  in  1860.  Jefferson  Davis 
only  acted  with  his  class  when  he  laid  down  with 
much  dignity  and  dramatic  effect  his  senatorial 
robes  in  1861  and  journeyed  sadly  toward  his 
Southern  home.  Perhaps  most  of  us  would  fol 
low  in  his  footsteps,  if  we  could  to-day,  rather 
than  sacrifice  great  wealth  and  a  privileged  posi 
tion  in  society. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ADAMS,  J.  Q.,  no,  112. 

ALLEN,  WILLIAM,  Senator 
from  Ohio,  157. 

ATCHISON,  DAVID,  of  Mis 
souri,  199,  202. 

Baptists,   14,  21,  54. 
BARRY,  WILLIAM  T.,  123. 
BEAUREGARD,  P.  G.  T.,  220. 
BELL,    JOHN,    of    Tennessee, 

191. 

BELMONT,   AUGUST,   210. 
BENJAMIN,    JUDAH    P.,    211. 
BENTON,     THOMAS     H.,     159, 

1 86. 

BERRIEN,  J.  M.,  123. 
BEVERLY,  WILLIAM,   6. 
BIRNEY,  JOHN  G.,  82. 
BRANCH,     JOHN,     of     North 

Carolina,  123. 

BRECKINRIDGE,  JOHN  C.,  235. 
BRIGHT,  JESSE  D.,  208,  225. 
BROWN,  ALEXANDER  G.,  184, 

206,  227. 

BUCHANAN,  JAMES,  216. 
BUTLER,    BENJAMIN    F.,    220, 

225. 

CALHOUN,  JOHN  C.  Parent 
age,  92 ;  early  schooling, 
93 ;  in  college,  94 ;  mar 
riage,  97  ;  in  congress,  99  ; 
as  a  "Young  Republican," 
101,  104;  internal  improve 
ments  and  the  tariff,  107  ; 
in  the  cabinet,  109 ;  first 
aspirations  for  the  presi 


dency,  112;  defeats  tariff 
bill  1827,  114;  the  South 
Carolina  Exposition,  116; 
break  with  Jackson,  119; 
124;  nullification,  129;  in 
the  Senate,  131  ;  a  nation 
alist,  134;  attitude  toward 
slavery,  135,  139;  opinion 
of  Dew,  137;  supports  Van 
Buren,  138;  efforts  to  unite 
the  South  and  West,  140, 
162,  219;  aspires  for  nom 
ination  1844,  142;  in  Ty 
ler's  cabinet,  144;  Memphis 
speech,  148,  149;  its  recep 
tion  at  the  South,  152  ;  re 
turn  to  Senate,  154;  Texas 
and  Oregon,  155  ;  Ten  Reg 
iments  bill,  157;  opposition 
to  Wilmot  proviso,  159; 
death  and  subsequent  in-' 
fluence,  164. 

CAMPBELL,  WILLIAM,  26. 

CARR,  DABNEY,  20. 

CARTER,  JOHN,  7. 

CASS,  LEWIS,  157,  159,  186, 
1 88. 

CHASE,  SALMON  P.,  202,  210. 

CHEVES,  LANGDON,  102,   114. 

CLAY,  HENRY,  85,  99,  102, 
105,  109,  no,  115,  117,  127, 
131,  132,  134,  141. 

CLARK,  GEORGE  ROGERS,  27. 

COBB,  HOWELL,  209,  225. 

COOPER,  THOMAS,  114. 

CRAWFORD,  WILLIAM   H.,  85. 
110,    113,   119 


239 


240 


INDEX 


GUSHING,    CALEB,     192,    195, 
205,  220,  225. 

DAVIS,  JEFFERSON,  66,  152. 
Parentage,  173;  education, 
176;  marriage,  178;  cotton 
planter,  179;  in  congress, 
181  ;  lieutenant  of  Walk 
er's,  184;  in  Mexican  war, 
185;  in  the  Senate,  186; 
favors  annexation  of  all 
Mexico,  156,  187;  South 
ern  policy,  1 88;  supports 
Cass  against  Taylor,  188; 
debate  with  Foote,  191  ;  in 
Pierce's  cabinet,  192;  per 
sonal  appearance,  193; 
Southern  Pacific  scheme, 
194,  195,  200;  checkmated 
by  Douglas,  198,  203 ;  be 
gins  reforms  in  War  De 
partment,  204 ;  imperialist, 
205,  206 ;  succeeds  to  Cal- 
houn's  leadership,  209  ;  ad- 
Visor  of  Buchanan's,  211  ; 
denounces  Walker,  213 ; 
opposes  Douglas,  216,  225  ; 
hopes  of  presidency  1860, 
218,  219;  opposes  seces 
sion,  220,  230 ;  retires  to 
Mississippi,  230  ;  hopes  for 
compromise  from  Republi 
cans,  231,  resigns  from 
Senate  1861,  235. 

DAVIS,  JOSEPH,  228. 

DEW,  THOMAS  R.,  81,  136. 

DODGE,  A.  C.,  of  Wisconsin, 
148,  200. 

DODGE,  HENRY,  of  Iowa,  148, 
200. 

DONELSON,  A.  J.,  145. 

DOUGLAS,  STEPHEN  A.,  148, 
194,  197,  201,  208,  213,  223, 
229. 

EATON,  JOHN  H.,  123. 
Embargo,    The,    61,    66. 
EVERETT,   EDWARD,   85. 


FOOTE,  HENRY  S.,  184,  191. 
Force    bill,    The,     133. 
FORSYTH,  JOHN,  212. 

GADSDEN,  JAMES,  of  South 
Carolina,  148 

GALLATIN,  ALBERT,   51,   57. 

GILES,  WILLIAM  B.,  75,  78, 
i37. 

GREELEY,  HORACE,  223. 

GRUNDY,  FELIX,  of  Tennes 
see,  99,  105. 

GUTHRIE,  JAMES,  of  Ken 
tucky,  197. 

HAMILTON,   ALEXANDER,   44. 
HAMILTON,  JAMES  A.,  119. 
HARRIS,  TOWNSEND,  205. 
HARRISON,    WILLIAM    HENRY, 

141. 
HENRY,    PATRICK,    4,    14,    15, 

16,  19,  26,  27,  38,  47. 
HUNT,   RANDALL,   138. 
HUNTER,  R.  M.  T.,  209,  225. 

Internal    improvements,    107. 

JACKSON,  ANDREW,  65,  in, 
112,  130,  132,  137. 

JEFFERSON,  THOMAS.  Parent 
age.  3  5  education,  5  ;  pop 
ularity  at  college,  8 ;  be 
gins  practice  of  law,  10; 
marriage,  1 1  ;  prefers  farm 
ing  to  law,  12;  Western 
sympathies,  18,  19;  parti 
san  of  Henry's,  20 ;  ideals 
of  the  party,  21  ;  believer 
in  democracy,  23,  31,  33, 
55.  73  J  in  Continental 
Congress,  29 ;  member  of 
Virginia  legislature,  32  ; 
breaks  with  Henry,  35,  41  ; 
in  Congress  1781,  37;  min 
ister  to  France,  39  ;  returns 
to  Virginia,  43 ;  organizes 
new  party,  46,  48,  54  ;  vice- 
president,  50  ;  unpopularity 
in  office,  51  ;  elected  presi- 


INDEX 


241 


dent,  57;  non-partisan,  59; 
Louisiana  Purchase,  59 ; 
the  Embargo,  61  ;  hostility 
to  the  Virginia  constitu 
tion,  67,  75  ;  attitude  toward 
slavery,  69,  71,  77,  79;  op 
ponent  of  Virginia  court 
system,  71  ;  favors  a  "re 
call"  of  legislators,  73 ; 
and  wider  suffrage,  74 ;  ef 
forts  at  reform,  76;  last 
days,  82. 

JONES,  GEORGE  W.,  200,  209. 

JOHNSTON,  ALBERT  SIDNEY, 
204. 

KIRCHEVAL,  SAMUEL,  74,  75. 

LAWRENCE,  ABBOTT,  of  Massa 
chusetts,   142. 
LEE,  HENRY,  49. 
LEE,  R.  H.,  6,  16,  19,  -24. 
LEE,  ROBERT  E.,  204. 
LEE,  S.  S.,  221. 
LEWIS,  WILLIAM  B.,  118,  119. 
LINCOLN,  A.,  221. 
LOGAN,    GEORGE,    51. 
Louisiana  Purchase,  59. 
LOWNDES,  WILLIAM,  102,  109. 

MACON,    NATHANIEL,    51,    57, 

67,  71. 
MADISON,  JAMES,  20,   21,  46, 

57- 
MARSHALL,  JOHN,  49,  52,  70, 

75- 

MASON,  GEORGE,   19. 

MASON,  JAMES  M.,  162. 

MCCLELLAN,  GEORGE   B.,   204. 

MCCLELLAN,  ROBERT,  of  Mich 
igan,  197. 

McDuFFiE,  GEORGE,  of  South 
Carolina,  79,  94,  114.  I27- 

Methodists,   The,    14,    54. 

Memphis    Convention,    148. 

Nashville   Convention,    163. 
NICHOLAS,     WILSON     CAREY, 
34,  83. 


Nullification,   129,   137. 
O'NEAL,  PEGGY,  121. 

PENDLETON,  EDMUND,  26,  27, 

36. 

PETTIGRU,  JAMES   L.,  94. 
PIERCE,  FRANKLIN,  192. 
PINCKNEY,  CHARLES,  58. 
POLK,    JAMES    K.,    146,    154, 

157,  161. 
PORTER,    PETER    B.,    of    New 

York,   99. 
Presbyterians,     The,     14,    21, 

54- 

PRENTISS,   SERGEANT   S.,   181. 
PRYOR,  ROGER  A.,   221. 

QUITMAN,  JOHN  A.,  of  Mis 
sissippi,  184,  185. 

RANDOLPH,  ISHAM,  3. 

RANDOLPH,  JOHN,  48,  130. 

RANDOLPH,  MARTHA  JEFFER 
SON,  88. 

RANKIN,  JOHN,  82. 

RHETT,  ROBERT  BARNWELL, 
162,  227. 

RITCHIE,  THOMAS,  140,  143, 
147,  152,  233. 

ROANE,    SPENCER,   21. 

ROBINSON,  JOHN,  16,  17,  18. 

SCHURZ,  CARL,   193. 

SEDGWICK,  THEODORE,  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  51. 

SEWARD,  WILLIAM  H.,  210, 
217,  230. 

SHELBY,  ISAAC,   109. 

SHIELDS,  JAMES,  of  Minne 
sota,  208. 

Slavery.  Its  growth  in  Vir 
ginia,  77 ;  interstate  slave 
trade,  78;  the  South  and 
slavery,  134;  207,  234. 

SLIDELL,  JOHN,  212,  216,  225. 

SMILEY,  JOHN,  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  102. 

SMITH,  WILLIAM  A.,  of  Vir 
ginia,  114,  138. 


242 


INDEX 


South  Carolina.  Exports 
1810,  103;  leads  in  con 
gress,  103,  114;  South  Car 
olina  Exposition,  116. 

STEPHENS,  ALEXANDER  H.,  of 
Georgia,  191. 

SUMNER,  CHARLES,  202. 

Tariff,  The,  107,  114,  132, 
134,  210. 

TAYLOR,  JOHN,  of  Caroline, 
21,  67,  71. 

TAYLOR,  ZACHARY,  189. 

TAZEWELL,  LITTLETON  W.,  75. 

THOMPSON,  JACOB,   184. 

TICKNOR,  GEORGE,  85. 

TRACY,  URIAH,  of  Connecti 
cut,  51. 

VAN     BUREN,     MARTIN,     118, 

138,    141- 
VANDERBILT,  CORNELIUS,  210. 


Virginia.  Exports  1810,  103; 
court  system,  72;  growth 
of  sectionalism,  15,  16. 

WALKER,  ROBERT  J.,  144,  157, 

181,  183,   185,  212,  213. 
WASHINGTON,  GEORGE,  49,  59. 
WEBSTER,  DANIEL,  151. 
WELD,  THEODORE,  82. 

WlGFALL,     LOUIS     T.,     221. 

Williamsburg,    Society    at,    6, 

7. 

Wilmot  proviso,  158. 
WINTHROP,   ROBERT,   of   Mas- 

sachussetts,  142. 
WISE,    HENRY   A.,    185,    209, 

227. 

WOOD,  FERNANDO,  210. 
WRIGHT,    Jos.    A.,    Governor 

of  Indiana,  208. 

YANCEY,  WILLIAM  L.,  162, 
217,  225,  227. 


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